


Lost and Lonely Space

by dracoqueen22



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Cross-Factional Relationship, M/M, Pre-Death of Optimus Prime, Sticky Sexual Interfacing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2019-01-15
Packaged: 2019-08-13 22:33:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 44,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16480994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dracoqueen22/pseuds/dracoqueen22
Summary: While on a sabbatical from the war, Ratchet runs into a spot of trouble that lands him in close company with a familiar face, the famed Decepticon Deadlock.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic brought to you by the incredibly amazing Cosmicdanger. :)

‘Take a vacation,’ Optimus orders, concern thick in his vocals, his optics dim and reflecting his fatigue. ‘You need to get away from the war, Ratchet. It’s consuming you.’   
  
‘It’s consuming all of us!’ Ratchet snarls in return. He picks up a scanner, ready to throw it, but Optimus is braced and ready, and in the end, he’s only proving Optimus’ point. ‘I’m scavenging mechs for parts. I’m burying more soldiers than I’m saving. A vacation’s not going to fix that.’   
  
‘Ratchet. Old friend.’ Optimus rests a hand on his shoulders, looking into his optics with the firmness only a former police officer can bear. Prowl has the same stare, though Optimus’ is more effective. ‘I need you. But not in pieces. Walk away.’   
  
Ratchet swallows over a jagged lump in his intake. ‘I don’t know if I can.’   
  
‘It’s not a suggestion,’ Optimus says.   
  
And that, as they say, is that.   
  
Ratchet leaves the battlefield in a ragged shuttle scavenged from other equally ravaged shuttles. It is large enough to uncomfortably seat one. He doesn’t ask for company. No one volunteers. He doesn’t chart a course because he doesn’t have a plan. He only knows he’s supposed to get away.   
  
Wheeljack shoves a holomap into his hands. He’s marked planets friendly or at least neutral to Cybertronians on it. He clasps his hands over Ratchet’s and he says, ‘No one will blame you if you don’t come back.’ And his indicators light up with flashes of bright purple and pink. ‘But if you do, I want a souvenir. Something shiny.’   
  
‘Or explosive,’ Ratchet promises.   
  
The holomap sits on his dash. It has more than a dozen prospective coordinates in it. After enough time passes, Ratchet will pick one at random.   
  
Optimus hasn’t given him a timetable for his return. Ratchet suspects Optimus believes he won’t come back. Maybe he’s right. Ratchet doesn’t know anymore, what he believes in, what he’s accomplishing, what he’s doing. He doesn’t know if a solo trip out into the universe will answer those questions.   
  
He’s not sure of anything anymore.   
  
He smells like death because he’s soaked in it. He’s brought the stench with him from the battlefield. There’s still gummed up fluids in his finger joints. If he’d taken the time to shower and wash, he’d never have left.   
  
He has to fight the urge to turn back, to defy Optimus’ orders. He squirms in his seat, guilt laying over him like a heavy, suffocating blanket. He thinks of all the sparks he could be saving right now. And then he berates himself for his arrogance in thinking he’s the only one who can do it.   
  
The war has reached a crescendo from which there is no escape. He saves sparks to watch them burn out all over again. He’s fighting a losing battle against Mortilus, and the god laughs at him from afar. Primus sets him challenge after challenge, and he fails every time.   
  
His hands still reek of energon.   
  
He recharges, and he dreams of death. Ghosts haunt him, accuse him, there’s no escape. He starts to think maybe Optimus has sent him away because he doesn’t want or need Ratchet anymore. He’d let Clarion’s spark slip through his fingers after all. They can’t win the war with a useless medic.   
  
He starts to think all sorts of things he desperately hopes aren’t true, but there’s a tiny corner of his spark which doubts.   
  
Ratchet drifts. He ignores the holomap. Choosing a direction feels like another failure, as though he’s choosing to walk away from the war and abandon everyone.   
  
For several cycles of the ship’s onboard chronometer, keyed to track Cybertronian standard like all the rest of the Autobots’ computers, he wanders. He has no real course. He recharges. He washes up. He picks at the grit and grime in his articulators. He starts and stops datapads he’s been meaning to read for decades. He recharges some more.   
  
He hopes someone remembers to drag Wheeljack out of his lab, by his indicators if necessary, otherwise he’ll forget to recharge, forget to refuel, forget everything. They’ll find him facedown on the floor, surrounded by bubbling fluids of unknown origin, if no one checks on him. In his fatigue, he’ll make a mistake, and who will put him back together? Who knows his modded frame as well as Ratchet does?  
  
Ratchet lurches online in the middle of a recharge cycle, remembering that he left Bluestreak in a CR chamber, and if he onlines without someone around, he’ll panic. Someone has to be there for him, keep an optic on him, talk him down from the inevitable nightmares. Will anyone remember?   
  
Ratchet rolls over, reaching for his comm, before he remembers he’s not on the space station anymore. He’s not within communication range of anyone, not with the pitiful equipment he has on board. He’s not out here to help anyone, to save anyone. He’s out here because he’s selfish, and he needs to save himself.   
  
Ratchet buries his face behind his hands, and static claws out of his vocalizer, and he murmurs apologies to mechs who can’t hear him.   
  


~

  
  
He drifts for several more cycles until the navigation software pings to let him know one of the uploaded coordinates are within reach, if he should feel so inclined.   
  
Thank you, Wheeljack.   
  
There’s a waystation nearby. It’s not much, mostly for information trade and refueling, if your ship runs on one of the twelve standard fuels in the universe, or just needs to plug in and recharge, provided your plug is one of the twenty galactic standards.   
  
It’s a complicated system.   
  
But it’s flagged friendly to all, even Cybertronians, and there’s a strict no-weapons, no-fighting policy. So it’s safe, for whatever definitions of safe there are, so Ratchet docks in hope to find a more specific course, rather than this aimless drift. Maybe there’s something in the information boards that’ll point him a direction he should go.   
  
He disembarks and wanders through a waystation surprisingly sparsely populated, given that it’s out in the middle of nowhere and sits on a common interstellar highway. He passes a few fellow travelers, but no one pays him any special attention. The information board is as sparse as the amount of visitors, and Ratchet twists his jaw out of annoyance. It would have been nice to find something.   
  
He pokes around at a few of the shops, but none of them sell energon or coolant or anything that would be of use to him. Their technology is lightyears out of date. The atmosphere has the reek of recycled air and too much organic exhalation. The pipes rattle and hiss and clunk alarmingly, like the waystation is in its death throes and the galactic police haven’t been out this way in a long, long time.   
  
The whole stop is a complete waste of time.   
  
Annoyed, Ratchet drags his feet back through the waystation to the dock. The halls are even emptier than they were before, and Ratchet’s spinal strut tingles with warning. He’s survived this long, through a planet-wide civil war, partially by listening to his instincts. But it’s not like there’s anywhere to run. His shuttle is all he has.   
  
There’s an ambush waiting for him in the docking bay. Of course, there’s an ambush. Why wouldn’t there be an ambush?  
  
Contrary to popular belief and elitism, Cybertronians are not the largest species in the universe. They don’t even crack the top ten. Oh, they throw their weight around like they are all planet-sized, but the truth is, Cybertronians are somewhere in the middle. There are bigger, badder, and angrier species out there. Most of them are largely peaceful. There’s something to the idiom about being bigger and gentler.   
  
Not true for the Pentaflexiamoriantrichoglycerites. And well, Ratchet supposes if that mouthful were his species name, he’d be an angry alien, too.   
  
Pentas, as they’ve become colloquially known, have little to no moral compass. The smallest of them is the size of Fortress Maximus. They like credits and don’t care what they have to do to earn them. It’s not surprising many of them have become piratical. So many of them, that pretty much everyone in the universe assumes all Pentas are pirates. They are, perhaps, the only species more universally loathed than Cybertronians, so that’s saying something.   
  
The moment the Pentas step into view, Ratchet knows his chances of escaping are slim to none. His only consolation is that he’s reasonably certain they don’t want him dead. They’d have killed him already if that were true.   
  
He’s surrounded, one in front, two to the left, three on the right, undoubtedly more behind him, not that he turns to look. The smallest of them could have benchpressed Optimus without breaking a sweat. If Pentas even sweat. They’re armed to the teeth, of which there are many, many rows of serrated edges, and it’s hard not to look at the row of eyes in their sunken faces without getting a little queasy.   
  
So he fights. If he’s going down, he’s going to take as many as he can with him, or at least, not make it easy.   
  
He never saw the Penta behind him. Only felt the sharp crack against the back of his head, right over a sensor cluster nexus for reset, and then he’s out like a light, clattering to the floor like so much spare parts.   
  


~

  
  
He onlines sometime later feeling as though he’s been bowled over by a shuttle. He’s lying on a cold floor, one that thrums beneath his plating, with the distinct sensation he’s onboard a spaceship of some flavor. His chronometer informs him he’s been unconscious for the better part of half a Cybertronian day.   
  
Lovely.   
  
Ratchet groans and leverages himself upright, running a quick systems check to ensure he’s not been compromised in any way. Which he hasn’t, as far as he can tell. He peels his optics open, and grimaces as the bright orange lights sear into his visual feed. His head pounds, like a night of binging on cheap engex, and his mouth is dry.   
  
He’s in a cell. Dimly glowing bars indicate it’s a cell more than capable of keeping a Cybertronian imprisoned. The cell is small. He has enough room to fully recline if he so wishes, but that’s the extent of it. There’s no bed, no sink, no furniture, no window. Just him, the floor, the cell bars, with so little space between them, he couldn’t slide a stylus through.   
  
There’s a collar around his neck. Ratchet runs his fingers across the seamless metal. It’s free of any catches, ridges, or otherwise. It’s not bolted into him, it doesn’t penetrate his frame or system at all. It’s just there. He has no idea what it does and no way to remove it. He can’t tell what it’s made of.   
  
He doesn’t think this is what Optimus meant by taking a vacation.   
  
Ratchet drags himself to a semblance of upright, puts his back against the wall where he can see the bars, and draws up his knees, bracing his arms across them. He could get up and examine the structures of his cell, but the Pentas have a reputation. He doubts there’s a means to escape. He doesn’t know what they want from him, but he imagines he’ll find out soon enough.   
  
Damn.   
  
Couldn’t they have taken him with a few datapads in his subspace?   
  


~

  
  
Ratchet dozes.   
  
There’s not much else he can do. He has his sensors trained on the bars, in case someone stops by to visit or peer in at their captive. He sends out a few questing pings to examine his environment, but everything bounces back. Shielded.   
  
Sometimes, he catches sounds, noises, like there are others captive down here. He doesn’t recognize the languages. He wonders if they have any more Cybertronians. A bright yellow light in the corner stares at him without blinking. He suspects it’s a camera.   
  
He gets no visitors. He’s not organic, so it’s like he needs to be fed or offered amenities. If there’s a patrolling guard outside his cell, Ratchet never sees the Penta or its ally, if it has any. There’s just darkness and dim lights and silence. If he wasn’t so anxious about the situation, it might even be peaceful.   
  
A week after his capture, by Cybertronian count, the steady hum of a ship in flight changes to the rumbling clunk of a spaceship docking somewhere. The entire ship shudders as it thuds into place, connecting by soft dock rather than landing within a docking bay.   
  
Ratchet stands and stretches, preparing for anything. They hadn’t been able to empty his subspace, and they hadn’t searched his storage compartments, so he’s technically armed. Whether or not he’ll have chance to use his weapons, he doesn’t know.   
  
Voices float down the hall, the Pentas talking to each other in that mellifluous language of theirs. Ratchet’s interpreter system is either buggy or jammed, because it doesn’t translate their conversation. Other cells are opened and closed, more voices raised in anger and fright.   
  
Ratchet approaches the bars and tries to peer through them, but he can’t see anything beyond dark shapes and more bars, some of them electric and glowing like his, others mere thick metal. Pirates and slavers, he thinks. Because of course. Why wouldn’t they be? It’s a profitable business for spacefaring adventurers, haunting waystations and picking up shuttles, capturing their owners to resale to other species. Some are more useful than others.   
  
There’s a pretty brisk trade in Kremzeek, Ratchet knows. The Spackians use them as energy batteries.   
  
A dark mass moves in front of Ratchet’s cell, the glow of the bars reflecting off the metal of some kind of armor. The bars fizzle out, and if there was ever a chance to make a break for it, now’s the time. Ratchet’s sensors go haywire as whatever had been blocking them before drops, and Ratchet reels from the sudden influx of information.   
  
He staggers and three long, sticky fingers wrap around his upper arm, jerking him out of the cell.   
  
“Don’t struggle,” a voice recites to him, lacking all semblance of emotion, like it’s been spat out of a universal translator. It comes from the Penta beside him, almost twice Ratchet’s height, and having to stoop to fit within the low ceilings of the prison.   
  
Ratchet says nothing, and stumbles forward as he’s tugged along behind a row of other Pentas gripping other prisoners, none of which are Cybertronian. One is an Exelon, but he doesn’t recognize the species of the other two. The noises of metal clanking and energy bars fizzling out echo from behind him, and he can only assume other captives are being retrieved as well.   
  
There’s a lot of white noise in his sensors. It makes static screech and roil across them. He picks up the evidence of radio transmissions before they dissolve into white noise.   
  
They pass a porthole, and all Ratchet can see are stars with a few distant specks that are planetary bodies of indeterminate size. There’s another ship pulled up beside the one he’s on, but he can only make out the tail end of it. GPS spins and spins, until it narrows him down on the far edge of Penta space, probably one of their many unnamed and rarely charted trading posts.   
  
They arrive at a split in the hallway. Ratchet and his captor go one way, the other organic captives go another. He’s bracketed on both sides by massive Pentas, both taller and broader than him.   
  
Stretching out before him is another long corridor, but they pass wide doorways that open into docking spaces, with no ships currently moored, the shimmer of an atmospheric shield keeping everything contained. Some are actual loading bays, others are mere openings for soft docks. As near as he can guess, this is a trading station. There doesn’t appear to be any guards or places for storage.  
  
Good to know.   
  
They hang an abrupt right into the next doorway, where a ship is docked, the cargo bay open and ramp extended. There’s something in the lean lines, spiky protrusions, and sleek shape that’s vaguely familiar, but it isn’t until Ratchet spies the Decepticon brand etched in the under carriage that his spark sinks into his tank.   
  
Well, this is unfortunate. Not surprising, but unfortunate.   
  
A cluster of Decepticons lounge at the base of the ramp, perched on crates of various sizes. A single mech stands further ahead of them, arms folded, legs braced apart, lips curled with derision. Ratchet looks him over, head to foot, as recognition dawns. His spark reverses course, claws out of his tanks, and takes up residence in his throat, forming a lump he can’t speak over.   
  
Prowl has made it a point to ensure all relatively high-ranking Autobots know the identities and positions of all known high-ranking Decepticons. From Megatron to Soundwave to Starscream to Shockwave, to their lieutenants and commanders and captains. Their largest threats, their greatest minds, their most ruthless killers…  
  
Knowing the enemy is the key to winning the war. Prowl reminds them this over and over and over again. He tumbles research into their hands: backgrounds and skill sets, everything their intelligence has gathered on these key players.   
  
The war has done a fantastic job of creating divisions. Sibling against sibling. Batchmate against batchmate. Friends against friends, and lovers fighting lovers. It’s impossible not to look across the battlefield without seeing the faces of mechs you once knew.   
  
It’s another thing entirely to look across the open space of a trading dock and see the face of a mech you once saved, who could have been capable of great things if Cybertron hadn’t failed him, so instead he ends up as the postermech to summon the masses to Megatron’s army. He ends up a killer. A good one.   
  
There aren’t words to describe the rock lodging in Ratchet’s throat when he recognizes the Decepticon captain waiting for them.   
  
Deadlock.   
  


*


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which the author demonstrates how very little she knows of physics, space travel, and spaceships. *insert author handwave*

_Frag_.   
  
It’s the first thought that enters Deadlock’s head when he sees the captive the Pentas have to trade. Of all the Autobots he expected them to acquire, Ratchet is not one of them. What the frag is he doing out here? Why isn’t he at Optimus Prime’s side like usual? There isn’t even any news on the Decepticon network about Ratchet being missing.   
  
Frag, frag, frag.   
  
The Pentas have no clue the value of their prisoner. But Deadlock’s not stupid. His fellow Cons know good and well who that red and white mech with medic brands stamped on his shoulders is.   
  
On the crate to Deadlock’s left, Falchion perks up. “Well, when they said they had an Autobot for trade, I didn’t expect it to be such a high-value target.” He slides off the crate and nudges Deadlock with an elbow. “Boss is going to be happy about this, isn’t he?”   
  
Deadlock shrugs off the elbow and glares. “I don’t care what makes Turmoil happy.” He slides his attention toward the approaching Pentas and their cargo.   
  
Ratchet, at least, doesn’t look harmed. He’s not restrained, save for the slave collar around his neck. If there’s recognition in his optics, Deadlock can’t see it. But then, he supposes a high-value medic wouldn’t remember the leaker he once saved in the Dead End. Probably had saved more of those in his ledger than are worth counting.   
  
“That’s not what I hear,” Scorch snickers.   
  
Deadlock glares at him and doesn’t dignify that with a response. He’s aware of the rumors. Decepticons like to chatter like a gaggle of younglings before their first training day. Instead, he focuses his attention on the two Pentas, barely sparing Ratchet a glance.   
  
“You’re late,” he says, even as he has to tilt his head back to look into their eyes. He fragging hates tall organics. Isn’t there some kind of cosmic law where organics shouldn’t get so large?  
  
The Penta on the left, a pale yellow in comparison to his bright magenta partner, snorts a wet sound. “You’re early,” it retorts in that mechanized, fake voice Deadlock has always hated. Universal translators have no personality to them.   
  
“Caught you a good one there,” Falchion pipes up. “How’d you manage that?”   
  
Deadlock grinds his denta as the two Penta exchange glances. Unicron save him from rookies who don’t know the first thing about bargaining with space pirates.   
  
He punches Falchion in the side of the head, hard enough to make a point and cause him to stagger, but not so hard he becomes deadweight. He sends a narrow beamed comm “shut it, you moron,” and Falchion hisses, rubbing his head, optics narrowed in anger.   
  
He doesn’t retaliate. Which is wise of him. Probably because his gaze drops to the hand Deadlock rests on the handle of his blaster. Warning. Reminder.   
  
“Good one?” Magenta Penta echoes, and its grip on Ratchet’s upper arm tightens, making his plating creak. Ratchet winces, but says nothing. In fact, all he’s doing is staring at Deadlock. “How good?”   
  
“It doesn’t matter. We already agreed on a price,” Deadlock growls.  
  
Yellow Penta sneers, showing off rows of serrated teeth. “Decepticons not trick us.” He gives Ratchet’s arm a shake. “This one worth more to others?”   
  
“It’s not a trick if we didn’t know your cargo in the first place,” Deadlock snaps, his armor bristling. To his right, Scorch slides off the crate with an intimidating clomp of his massive feet. “Now we brought your trade. Give us our merchandise.”   
  
Magenta Penta ignores him and grabs Ratchet’s face, forcing Ratchet to look up at him. “You worth something?”   
  
“Depends on who you ask,” Ratchet says, with more verve then Deadlock would have expected for a mech who’s been captured and is about to be sold to the opposing army. “In fact, if the Autobots knew you had me, you might have yourself a good old-fashioned bidding war. Could come out rich by the end.”   
  
Deadlock’s engine growls.  _Ratchet, you idiot. You have no idea what you’re bargaining with_.   
  
“That so?” Magenta Penta says, and his lips curl into a broad, frightening smirk. He tilts his head and eyes Deadlock narrowly. “The price is double.”   
  
Falchion snarls and stomps forward, but Deadlock slams a palm on his chest and shoves him back. He hisses a warning at the idiot rookie who’s going to get them killed. Primus, but Turmoil owes him for sending him off with this greenhorn.   
  
“No,” Deadlock says, and draws a blaster with his free hand, fingers resting on the hilt. “We had an agreement. You are bound by your word.”   
  
Yellow Penta laughs. “Doesn’t work the way you think it does, Cybertronian,” he says. “You’re on our turf. It goes how we say it goes.”   
  
Falchion growls, and the blaster on his shoulder whirrs to life, humming with restrained charge. Scorch’s hands start to glow, armor shifting and clicking aside to form the weapons installed on his frame.   
  
“Double,” Magenta says. It sounds like a challenge.   
  
Fine. If that’s the way they want to play it, Deadlock has no issues with taking the hard way.   
  
Deadlock lifts his chin. “No.”   
  
He lifts a hand and fires, not with the blaster he’d readied, but with the other, the one they aren’t prepared for. Two shots, crackling darkly through the air and slamming into Yellow’s shoulder, making him loosen his grip on Ratchet.   
  
“Betrayers!” Magenta snarls, and the docking bay abruptly drops into half-light, emergency beacons flashing and sirens screeching a warning.   
  
It all goes to the Pit.   
  
Falchion and Scorch are his subordinates and technically, his responsibility. But when the shooting starts, Deadlock only has optics for Ratchet, who finally stirs, yanking free of Yellow’s grip and lashing out at Magenta with a kick that would make any Decepticon proud.   
  
Crunch goes Yellow’s nearest knee, and he howls as it crumples beneath him.   
  
A stray shot sends Falchion spinning backward, his abdomen smoking, his frame writhing in agony. Deadlock’s heard stories about the weird and deadly weapons the Pentas tend to carry. If they survive this, Shockwave will be delighted to know the rumors are true. He’ll probably want one to study.   
  
Priorities.   
  
Scorch snarls and darts forward, tackling Magenta as if the Penta isn’t twice his size and twicely armed – literally and figuratively. They grapple, rolling around the floor, and Ratchet tries to make a break for it, but not back toward the corridor and the trading base. He runs for Deadlock’s ship like he thinks he’s going to steal it.   
  
Yellow’s not down.   
  
His primary snaps out, long and gangly, wrapping around Ratchet’s ankle. Down Ratchet goes, clattering to the floor, and he whips around to his back, kicking at the hand hauling him back.   
  
Deadlock fires, taking out one of Yellow’s eyes, and it splatters organic goo everywhere. Deadlock fires again, misses, but only because he’s twisting to avoid Yellow’s return fire, the purple-crackling energy whizzing past him, exploding where it slams into a wall, lighting the bay with bright charge.   
  
Scorch yelps, and there’s a wet, sickening crunch. Deadlock can’t tell if its bone or strut. Ratchet suddenly has a blaster, and he’s firing at Yellow, hitting him in the shoulder and the chest, but the energy smacks against Yellow’s chest armor and fizzles into nothing.   
  
He kicks again, breaks Yellow’s wrist, and the Penta growls as his hand goes limp and Ratchet tears himself free. He scrambles to his feet and takes off again, and this time, Deadlock intercepts before Yellow can give chase. He kicks, high and hard, foot snapping against Yellow’s face.   
  
It crunches beneath his foot, green blood like ichor spattering out. Yellow rears back and Deadlock fires, one-two-three pulls of the trigger, until the Penta’s head is a pulpy mass. The corpse goes limp, dropping like a wet sack.   
  
Something smacks against his back, and Deadlock staggers forward to catch his balance. He manages to spin around, but not soon enough to avoid the blastershot that slams into his abdomen. He has a moment of panic, before he realizes it’s not the same type of weapon as what had taken down Falchion.   
  
He’s just brimming with luck today.   
  
It does hurt, however, and Deadlock grits his denta against a surge of electric fire racing through his lines. Magenta’s dragging himself to his feet, mouth bloody, spitting out a gob of broken teeth. He swipes the back of his hand over his mouth, blaster dangling from his fingers, but the other primary hand grips tight around something.   
  
“The General will hear of this,” he says, voice gurgling.   
  
Deadlock’s vision drops to Magenta’s belly, where a hilt protrudes, blood welling up around it. Scorch isn’t moving behind him. Well, at least he’d been good for something.   
  
“The General can kiss my aft,” Deadlock snarls, and he fires again, and again and again, backing toward his ship as he squeezes the trigger. He tracks Ratchet’s rapid flight toward the open cargo door.   
  
Deadlock winds through the cargo he’d brought for trade, only briefly mourning their loss. Turmoil will have his head for leaving it behind. Well, Turmoil can kiss his aft, too. Deadlock rather likes living, and the loss of cargo is a fair trade for his life.   
  
He gives Scorch and Falchion a passing glance, but their biolights are dim and their paint greying. They’re dead and no more use to him. They can rot here like the rest of the dead no one else seems to care about.   
  
Deadlock twists to avoid Magenta’s next fire, and returns volley, though his shots go wide and high. Magenta’s slumping, blood pooling around his feet, empty hand cupping his abdomen, the other still clenched tight. He’s sagging toward the floor, spitting up blood and teeth. His clenched fist lifts as Deadlock backs onto the ramp.  
  
“Cybertronian scum,” Magent gurgles, and his fingers open, one by one by one, until a small cylindrical object drops from them, blinking blue in the dim.   
  
Frag.   
  
Deadlock breaks into a full dash, storming into his ship as though his spark depends on it, because it does. Ratchet’s staggering ahead of him, panting, looking around like he can’t figure out which way is the bridge. Deadlock catches up, grabs the back of his collar and hauls him to the adjoining corridor and the emergency exits.   
  
“What the--”  
  
“There’s no time!” Deadlock snarls and shoves him toward the nearest shuttle, his elbow slamming into the emergency release as a loud, ominous rumble starts up from outside the ship.   
  
Sirens sound as the door cycles open, and Deadlock yanks Ratchet inside with him. He smacks the panel to close the door and hustles it to the bridge, throwing himself into the chair and powering up the shuttle as quickly as possible. Another ominous rumble shakes the shuttle, and alarms scream.   
  
“Get in the damn chair!” Deadlock orders as the thrusters roar to life, restraints leaping out of the chair to wrap around his frame.   
  
His cable snakes out, notching into the panel as readings and alerts stream into his cortex once it recognizes his permissions. He flicks switches, and the engine hums through the compartment, docking clamps releasing as the countdown to launch begins.   
  
Frag the countdown. There’s no fragging time.   
  
Deadlock punches the emergency release, reaching up to flick the switch to do so.   
  
 _Click_. “Let me go,” Ratchet demands.   
  
There’s a blaster pointed at Deadlock’s head. He ignores it.   
  
“We don’t have fragging time for this,” he says, and punches the accelerator.   
  
The shuttle launches itself off the side of his ship as the distinct whomp of a massive explosion slams into the back end.   
  
Ratchet tumbles backward, blaster flying from his fingers, and there’s a stream of curses and thuds and crashes. He’ll survive so Deadlock focuses on steering them away from the massive ball of fire rising behind them. Trust the Pentas to be crazy enough to blow up a portion of their trading station just to prove a point.   
  
Afts.   
  
Deadlock shoves the accelerator forward, throwing them into maximum thrust, as a wave of crackling fire radiates from his back and into the rest of his frame. He vaguely remembers absorbing a blow there, but he can’t think about that right now. The blast nips at their heels, threatening to consume them, and open space is their only refuge.   
  
Curses mutter behind him as the shuttle rattles into range of a jump, and Deadlock only calculates for a half-second before he decides the risk is worth it. He doesn’t have time to plot a course. All he can do is pick the first open drop and hope it doesn’t put them somewhere even more dangerous.   
  
“Hold on to something!” he shouts and flips the switch.   
  
He doesn’t pray. Primus isn’t listening anyway.   
  
The entire shuttle lurches as the last reaching arms of the blast grab hold of the rear thrusters and bites down, tearing into metal. For a moment, the shuttle wobbles, and Deadlock feels the grip of the wormhole slipping away. He punches the accelerator again, giving it a rapid burn, and the shuttle leaps forward, diving into the swirling vortex with the last echoes of the blast chasing after it.  
  
He takes half a vent to mourn the loss of his ship. He really liked that ship. It meant freedom from Turmoil, to a certain extent. It meant freedom from a lot of things.   
  
He’s going to miss that ship.   
  
The shuttle drops out of quantum space and blasts into a new corner of the galaxy, the last tendrils of an explosion chasing after it. A shudder runs through the small ship, and warnings stream loudly through the bridge, until Deadlock slams the mute button so he can hear himself think. He has no idea where they are, the GPS rapidly click-clicking as it tries to pinpoint their location.   
  
His back hurts. His side burns.   
  
He can’t seem to feel his feet, and that’s not a good sign.   
  
Damage reports stream across the cable connection and through his cortex. The rear thrusters are damaged. One of the stabilizing wings has been bent. They’re mobile, but repairs will have to be made eventually.   
  
“What… the frag… was that?” Ratchet snarls from somewhere in the back of the shuttle, and the sound of him clambering to his feet is a distant noise compared to the ringing in Deadlock’s audials.   
  
“That was me saving your aft,” Deadlock says. Shaking fingers flip several switches as he throttles down to a more meandering pace. “Try and be a little grateful.”   
  
“Grateful?” Ratchet echoes. He stomps toward the bridge, his field preceding him like a violent, buzzing thing.   
  
Or maybe that’s the buzzing in Deadlock’s cortex. He’s not sure anymore. He tilts his head, left and right, but that doesn’t seem to help. If anything, that makes him dizzier.   
  
“You almost killed me!”   
  
Ratchet’s voice makes Deadlock wince. He presses a hand to his abdomen and looks down, sees the energon staining his palm, and then realizes he’s sitting in a pool of it.   
  
Well.   
  
That’s not good.   
  
“You were almost dead anyway,” Deadlock snaps, or slurs rather.   
  
His vision goes staticky on the edges. He slumps in the chair and something crackles wetly in his vents. Deadlock groans, coughs up energon, and strains trembling fingers toward the auto-pilot.   
  
It’s the last thing he manages to do before he tastes the grey. He hears the dull buzz of a voice, hands on his armor, and then he doesn’t feel much else.   
  


***


	3. Chapter 3

Ratchet doesn’t know what’s worse.   
  
That when Deadlock slumps in the chair, clearly unconscious, Ratchet doesn’t hesitate to rush to his aid. Or that he’s worried about the notorious Decepticon and actually cares to make sure he survives this.   
  
Or maybe he’s thinking too hard.   
  
Ratchet glances at the console, confirms there’s some kind of auto-navigation system activated, and hurriedly unbuckles Deadlock from the seat. He has to disconnect the Decepticon from the console, and it angrily blats at him, but stays their course. Whatever their course is.   
  
There’s a pool of energon on the chair and the floor beneath Deadlock. There’s a hole in his back, his side, his abdomen. The wounds are ragged and burned, and a sickly, poisonous stench rises from the blastershot in his back. Damn the Pentas and their propensity to test new weapons tech on a near-constant basis.   
  
Ratchet hauls Deadlock up, throws him over a shoulder, and sloughs him back to the tiny compartment that serves as a recharge room in this shuttle. There’s really not much here, but it’s the only place Ratchet can lay out the Decepticon that’s not the floor. From that point, it’s rote.   
  
If there’s one thing Ratchet still remembers how to do, it’s being a medic. He cleans and welds and patches and growls when he realizes he’s going to have to put Deadlock through a fluid flush in order to clear his system of whatever the Pentas pumped into him.   
  
Ratchet doesn’t think too hard about what he’s doing. He throws a mesh over the Decepticon badge on Deadlock’s chestplate. He knows it’s there, but at least it doesn’t stare back at him.   
  
“We’ve gotta stop meeting like this, kid,” Ratchet sighs as he works and works, only occasionally glancing out the windshield to make sure they aren’t in danger of colliding with anything, out here in the emptiness of space.   
  
He doesn’t know why he’s giving it all to save the spark of a single Decepticon, one who intended to buy him from the Pentas no less. He just knows that he can’t not, and before the war, before having to choose between one patient and the next, saving sparks is what he did. Saving sparks had been his purpose.   
  
It should have been his only purpose.   
  
Hours later, Deadlock is stable, and Ratchet stumbles out of the small compartment. He slumps against a cabinet, blinks out of his medic haze, and focuses on himself for the first time. He chugs one of the cubes of energon from their stock, and addresses the damage to his own frame. Thankfully minor, but he can’t just ignore it.   
  
He keeps his sensors trained on Deadlock, not only because he’s a bit concerned about what other effects the poison might have, but also because Deadlock probably won’t online feeling friendly. Ratchet wants some advance notice before he gets a blaster to the face. He had, after all, pointed a weapon at Deadlock before their rapid exodus from the trading station.   
  
Ratchet stares at his reflection in a shiny panel and fingers the collar around his neck. There’s no obvious mechanism to disengage it. Given the tiny device that had activated a large bomb, he’s loathe to just snap it off. It might be the last thing he ever does.   
  
He pushes off the cabinet and staggers back into the bridge. He drops into the pilot’s chair and stares blankly at the console. Exhaustion tugs at every line, every strut, but he can’t offline here. Someone on this ship needs to be alert, and right now, it’s certainly not Deadlock.   
  
Ratchet frowns. Where are they even? There’s nothing out the windshield but stars. The ship seems to be moving forward, probably set to auto-pilot, but there’s no destination set in the nav. At least, not one Ratchet can see anyway. He tries poking at the console, flicking a few switches, pressing a few buttons, but nothing responds.   
  
The whole thing’s been locked.   
  
Frag. Damn distrusting Decepticons.   
  
“That’s pointless, you know. It’s only going to recognize me.”   
  
Ratchet glances over his shoulder. Deadlock slumps in the doorway of the recharge room, leaning heavily on the frame, one arm slung across his abdomen. His optics are dim, and even from here, Ratchet can detect the raggedness of his ventilations. But he’ll live.   
  
“I noticed,” Ratchet replies and swivels back to the console. He shifts, and grimaces. Damn. He’d forgotten about the spill of energon from Deadlock’s wound. “You should be in the berth.”   
  
“Yeah. That’s not gonna happen.” Deadlock drags himself forward, free hand using the wall and equipment to stabilize himself. “Get the frag out of my chair.”   
  
Ratchet slants him a sideways look. “You could be politer to the mech who saved your spark.”   
  
“Cause you did it out of the kindness of your spark?” Deadlock snorts. “It was self-preservation. You don’t get kudos for that.” He grips the back of the second chair and glares. “Out.”   
  
Ratchet leans back and folds his arms over his chassis. “If you think you’re capable of making me, you’re welcome to try.”   
  
Deadlock rolls his optics and slumps into the navigator’s chair, still holding his abdomen. It probably hurts, but Ratchet doesn’t have the pain chips to spare, and besides, Deadlock’s likely a masochist anyway. Most Decepticons are.   
  
“What the frag are you doing out here anyway?”   
  
Ratchet swivels back around in the chair, relaxing as much as he can with a deadly Decepticon next to him. And the tackiness of drying energon beneath his aft. “I’m on vacation.”   
  
“Seriously.”   
  
“I am serious.”   
  
Deadlock barks a laugh, only to hiss and curl inward when he does it. “Frag, that hurts,” he mutters, and tips his head back against the chair, rolling his face toward Ratchet. “And your idea of a vacation is ending up with the Pentas?”   
  
“That wasn’t part of the plan.”   
  
“Yeah, they never are.” Deadlock lurches upright and withdraws a cable with his free hand, shaking a little before he manages to connect to the console. “You’re not getting out of here without me, so don’t go thinking about killing me in my recharge.”   
  
Ratchet chuffs a vent. “If I wanted to kill you, I wouldn’t have bothered saving your spark.” He points an accusing finger at Deadlock. “If there’s anyone who ought to be worried about getting offed in their recharge, it’s me.”   
  
“If I wanted you dead, it would’ve been easier to leave you to the Pentas,” Deadlock says with a side-eye.   
  
The console powers up, switches flickering to life, and the background hum cycles up into a background rumble. The HUD display flashes into view as does the holo-nav map, not that peering at it does Ratchet any good. He has no idea where they are.   
  
“Then we’ve established neither of us is going to kill the other. Good to know.” Ratchet drops his elbow onto the arm of the chair and props his chin on his knuckles. “So is this a thing Decepticons do now? Buy Cybertronians for spare parts?”   
  
“Better us than them.” Deadlock flicks several more switches, and the holomap spins around in a dizzying manner, struggling to pinpoint their location.   
  
Ratchet doesn’t look at it or Deadlock. Instead, he stares out the windshield at the stars because they’re all he can see. No planets or moons, just stars for lightyears around. It’s as much disconcerting as it is comforting.   
  
He’d forgotten how very empty space could be.   
  
“Oh, yes. How noble of you,” Ratchet drawls. “Thank you for saving me from a horrible fate. Truly, I ought to give you a medal.”   
  
“If you’d have been Neutral, you’d have been given the opportunity to join us,” Deadlock points out.   
  
Ratchet lifts his orbital ridges and rolls his gaze toward Deadlock. “And if I’d said no?”   
  
Deadlock doesn’t dignify that with an answer. He pretends full focus on the holomap and whatever his fingers are doing, while the other continues to cup his abdomen. Ratchet’s done a great job with the patch. No energon’s leaking through, so it must be a subconscious gesture, to protect what’s considered a weakness.   
  
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Ratchet says with a snort. He slumps a little further in the chair and cycles a ventilation.   
  
Silence descends, tense though it is. Ratchet’s relieved they haven’t started shooting each other yet. Then again, in a space this small, it wouldn’t be wise for anyone hoping to survive. A single stray shot could take out the nav-comp or the auto-pilot or the steering system or anything of import.   
  
This unspoken truce is all they have to keep themselves alive right now.   
  
“How long you been on vacation anyway?” Deadlock asks, and there’s something snide in his tone, something that ruffles Ratchet’s plating. “You’re Prime’s CMO, and there’s no chatter about you being missing.”   
  
“Because I’m not.” Ratchet hauls himself out of the chair with a creak of hydraulics that shouldn’t feel as old as they do. Thank Primus he’d seen a small washrack in his earlier poking around. “They might not know exactly where I am, but I’m not missing. Or at least, I won’t be, given the fact I’m going to miss my check in soon.”   
  
He rummages through their meager supplies and produces a cube of low-grade for Deadlock. They’ll have to be frugal, unless they catch an orbit around a sun to process some solar grade. It’s another reason not to fight.   
  
Deadlock shakes his head. “It still doesn’t make any sense. A vacation in the middle of a war? Can you imagine Shockwave taking one?” He makes a derisive noise.   
  
Ratchet grinds his denta and counts backwards from ten. He stands between the two chairs and shoves the cube into Deadlock’s face. “It wasn’t my idea.”   
  
He doesn’t get a thank you.   
  
“But getting captured by space pirates was part of the plan?”   
  
“Of course not!”   
  
Deadlock snatches the cube and flicks it open with one thumb. “Autobots,” he snorts. “You’re lucky I’m the one who found you. I’d have taken you to Megatron. You’d have been a prisoner.”   
  
“Or worse.” Ratchet drops back down in the chair. It squeaks ominously beneath him. The shuttle continues to drift aimlessly. He eyes the communication console and wonders if he can hack it.   
  
Deadlock tips his head back and guzzles the energon in the space of two vents before he tosses the empty cube over his shoulder. It clatters somewhere against the far wall. “Worse is what those pirates would have sold you to. Trust me.”   
  
Ratchet grimaces. “If it’s not obvious by now, I don’t.”   
  
Deadlock’s head rolls toward him, optics narrowed to amber-red slits. “Want I should find their nearest hideaway and drop you off? Let you try your luck with them again?”   
  
“Want me to accidentally nick a central line and see how quickly you bleed out?” Ratchet retorts with a raised orbital ridge.   
  
The air crackles between them. Their fields clash, angry and bitter more than anything else, which Ratchet’s glad for. He doesn’t want Deadlock to sense the guilt layered beneath it.   
  
If he’d only done more, perhaps Drift wouldn’t have become… this.   
  
“What’s the plan?” Ratchet asks, once the silence drags on too long, and they’re accomplishing nothing by sitting here glaring at one another.   
  
Deadlock shifts to face forward, fingers flying across the console. His clamped armor and withdrawn field reflect the tension vibrating between them. The holomap stills from the rapid cycling and zooms inward, focusing on a single, blinking icon.   
  
“We’re here,” he points out.   
  
Ratchet squints. “In the middle of nothing.”   
  
“Yep.”   
  
“Frag.” There’s really no other word to use. They’re in an escape shuttle, for Primus’ sake. It doesn’t have nearly the range of a full-fledged ship. And no doubt they’d used all they had for that one jump.   
  
“Yep,” Deadlock pops the glyph and taps a few more keys, causing the holo-nav to swirl across the stars and focus on a cluster of bright icons. “The absolute closest point of neutrality is the waystation in the Hyades Cluster. There’s an asteroid belt or two in the way, but it’s a few weeks journey if we’re lucky. Death if we’re not.” He shrugs.   
  
Asteroid belt. Fan-fragging-tastic. That’s not going to be difficult to pilot through or anything. They’re in a shuttle. It’s a boat with all the maneuverability of a tank.   
  
Ratchet braces an elbow on the chair and leans closer to the map. “What else?”   
  
Two taps and the image smears off to the left. “The Sol System is over this way.” Deadlock’s tone is perfectly bland, bored even. “That’s a couple months at the limping pace we’ve got – the quantum engine’s all outta juice by the way – but it’s a clear path if you don’t count the estrix.”   
  
“The what?” Ratchet frowns, racking his processor, but unable to find any data on anything similar to the weird garble of syllables Deadlock had just spat out.   
  
“Estrix,” Deadlock repeats, and his forehead crinkles. “Huge spacefaring energon-suckers?”   
  
Ratchet gives him a blank look because he’s never heard of the estrix and strongly suspects Deadlock is making them up.   
  
“Like a scraplet only ten times bigger and hungrier?” Deadlock continues, making a vague gesture with his free hand, his forehead lines growing deeper and deeper, his voice inching into incredulous.   
  
Ratchet waits for him to get to the point.   
  
Deadlock mutters a curse and turns back to the console. “Well, they exist. I guess Autobots are too homebody to realize there are more dangerous things out in the universe than a handful of Decepticons.” He snorts. “Anyway, Estrix are mean. They’re the size of the average mech, and when they’re out of juice, they go into stasis until they smell some fresh meat. We’d be easy pickings for ‘em.”   
  
Ratchet glares at the holo-map. “Then it’s not a clear path.”   
  
“Depends on what kind of chances you want to take.” Deadlock shrugs, his tires bobbing, but the motion is far from casual. Pain leaks into his field.   
  
Ratchet considers the pain chips in his medkit, but they only have so many, and he’s not feeling that charitable yet. He stares at the map again, searching for something, anything that’s a viable option. He spies a bright, spiral cluster, off to the far right.   
  
“What about that?” he asks, pointing.   
  
“Electronic deadzone,” Deadlock says, sounding bored. “Nothing that requires a circuit functions there, including us. It’s not even a bit of an option.”   
  
Ratchet spits out a curse before he can swallow it down. “How the fragging frag did we end up so far from everything?” he demands, fist making a light tap on the arm of the chair.   
  
Deadlock leans back in his chair, cupping his midsection. “I didn’t have time to chart a course. The warp drive dropped us in the nearest exit, and that’s all the charge it has. Pit, we’re lucky we even know where we are.”   
  
“Lucky,” Ratchet repeats, and kicks out a foot, narrowly missing the bottom of the console. “Some fragging vacation.” Stuck on a tiny emergency shuttle with an angry Decepticon. Oh, yeah. This is real relaxing.   
  
Deadlock has the audacity to laugh, though he follows it with a vented hiss. “Ain’t it though?” The smile on his lips is far from friendly. “Looks like it’s you and me, Autobot. Stuck in this tugboat together, trying not to kill each other. Fun, fun.”   
  
Fun.   
  
Not bloody likely.   
  
Ratchet glares at the holomap, the blinking icon that is their ship in the middle of nothing, and their complete lack of options. They could be rational or they could be reckless.   
  
Ratchet gnaws on his bottom lip, indecision warring within him. He eyes Deadlock. “How skilled are you at piloting this thing?”   
  
“I get by.”   
  
Ratchet stares at the holo-map, at safety that is within reach but a long time away, or a great risk that’ll get him to safety a lot faster. “Skilled enough to get through an asteroid field or two?”   
  
Deadlock lifts an orbital ridge, lip curled in a sneer. “That eager to get away from me already? And here I thought we were becoming friends.”   
  
“Don’t be an idiot,” Ratchet says, flattening his tone as much as he can manage. “Can you do it or not?”   
  
Deadlock rolls his shoulders. “I can give it a try. If that’s the action you think is best.”   
  
Ratchet sits back in the chair and sets his jaw. “I think this vacation is a bust, and we need to get back where we belong. Before I kill you.” Or vice versa.   
  
“Aye captain,” Deadlock drawls and throws out a sarcastic salute. He tilts his head. “But before we can go anywhere, that’s gotta come off.” His free hand points right at Ratchet’s intake.   
  
He touches the collar. “You have the key?”   
  
“I have a key,” Deadlock says, and fishes around in his subspace, pulling out a small rectangular object and giving it a wiggle. “That there collar is a Penta tracking device and bomb, the latter of which is just enough to take off your head, if they feel so inclined.”   
  
Well, at least he’d been right to be cautious.   
  
Ratchet folds his arms over his chassis. “Then why are you willing to take it off? Seems to me that’s something you could hold over my head?”   
  
Literally.   
  
“Because I’m not interested in some stray Penta ship picking up on its signal, and figuring out who’s to blame for that trading frag-up.” Deadlock rolls his optics and shifts in the chair, finally lifting the hand over his abdomen to gesture to Ratchet. “So come here so I can take that off you.” He pats his lap pointedly.   
  
Ratchet’s lip curls. “No thanks.”   
  
“You’d rather have a bomb around your neck?” Deadlock asks.   
  
“I’d rather not have to debase myself for a bit of freedom,” Ratchet snaps.   
  
Deadlock rolls his optics and heaves himself out of the chair, moving toward Ratchet’s. “Only a mech who’s never had to bite and claw his way toward an ounce of it would say that.” He touches the rectangular remote to the collar around Ratchet’s neck, and it abruptly disengages with a flash of heat against Ratchet’s plating. “Must’ve been nice.”   
  
Ratchet eases the collar off his neck. “Is it still active?”   
  
“Not while it’s unlatched.”   
  
He tucks the collar-slash-bomb into his subspace. One never knows when something could be useful, especially given that they are floating in the middle of empty space. “Is that what the Decepticons mean for you? Freedom?”   
  
“I don’t think that’s any of your business,” Deadlock says, his tone tight, losing that antagonizing flavor.   
  
Ratchet looks up at him, into amber-red optics that are narrow slits of warning. “So I’m just supposed to pretend I don’t know who you used to be? And what you could’ve been?”   
  
“I was a leaker on the streets, and you saved my spark to make yourself feel better about it,” Deadlock bites out, and anger flashes in his field, but not quick enough to disguise the shame broiling thick and black beneath it. “There’s nothing to pretend because the past doesn’t matter.”   
  
Ratchet twists his jaw. “The past always matters. It’s what shapes us. We’re not strangers, Drift.” He uses the mech’s former designation pointedly. Just because he’d let Megatron rename him into this creature, doesn’t mean the mech he used to be has vanished.   
  
Deadlock’s ventilations audibly crackle. “Aren’t we?” he demands, and it’s with a flexing of fingers into loose fists. “You didn’t save anything back then. You just sent me back out into nothing. I needed saving then, I don’t fragging need it now.”  
  
“Right,” Ratchet drawls. “Because turning into a killer courtesy of the Decepticons is an improvement.”  
  
“I’m fighting for something. There’s a difference,” Deadlock bites out, his tone edged with a growl, his field aggressively filling the small compartment. “And since you became a pawn for the Autobots, I don’t think you have any room to talk.” He pauses, tilts his head, grinning with sharpened denta. “Then again, you’ve always been the Senate’s pawn, haven’t you?”  
  
Ratchet stands, because like frag Deadlock is going to take that tone with him while he’s sitting down like an errant new-spark. “I’m no one’s pawn. I chose the Autobots because it was the right thing to do. Because your boss and his army were tearing their way through everyone and someone had to stop him before he destroyed everything.”   
  
“Yeah, you did a swell job of that,” Deadlock snaps. “Don’t act like the Autobots are free of sin. You’ve destroyed as much as we have.”   
  
“For lack of a better word – you started it. Megatron chose violence, and when diplomacy failed, we responded in kind.”   
  
“Diplomacy. Right.” Deadlock snorts and his field contracts again, sharp and hot and bitter. “It must have been easy for you, living in your tower, to look down on us and decide what we should have done to save ourselves. It’s easy to judge when you already have it all, isn’t it?”  
  
Ratchet chuffs a vent. “That’s an excuse. You wanted this. Megatron wanted this. Violence and death and power, that’s what it’s about. Because if it wasn’t, you wouldn’t have felt the need to pretend to be someone you’re not. You wouldn’t have to hide behind ‘Deadlock’.” He rolls his optics. “You talk about freedom, and then you let Megatron give you a chain, because you hate yourself, you hate who you are,  _Drift_. And that’s no one’s fault but your own.”   
  
Fury rages in Deadlock’s field. It has a tangible presence against Ratchet’s armor, and he almost reels in the face of it.   
  
He shoves a finger at Ratchet and hisses, “Don’t call me that. Drift is dead. That useless leaker is dead. And that’s the way he’s going to stay.” He whirls around, stomping past the two seats on the bridge. “I’m going to recharge. I’ll get the alert when we get close to the first belt. Until then, leave me the frag alone.”   
  
The door to the recharge room rattles shut with a definitive clang that does nothing to dispel the heat of Ratchet’s glare. He’s angry and he’s disappointed, and he’s not sure who both of those emotions are meant for first. He slumps back down into the chair, scrubbing his face with his palm, the taste of Deadlock’s shame and outrage heavy on the edge of his field.   
  
The ship chugs steadily onward. Ratchet can’t call the pace brisk. At best, they are trudging toward their destination. Maybe they can make it through the rings of asteroid belts to rejoin their factions on the other side. More likely, it’ll get them killed.   
  
Honestly, Ratchet doesn’t know which is worse.   
  
~


	4. Chapter 4

Deadlock can’t recharge.   
  
It’s not so much that he’s trying to, but that he’d said he was going to do it, and by Primus, he’s going to recharge. But he can’t. The anger sparks too brightly, leaves him jittery. His abdomen aches, and while he’s suffered pain before, it’s different in the midst of battle. Energon rush and emotion can forestall any discomfort.   
  
Not so much now with only his thoughts to distract him, and the knowledge of Ratchet there in the bridge, sanctimonious and disappointed. His disappointment shouldn’t matter. Doesn’t matter.   
  
Except where it does.   
  
Deadlock growls and slings an arm over his optics, letting the other rest on his abdomen, as if he can keep his internals where they belong by willpower alone. Not that there’s any concern of his bits falling out. Ratchet’s a good medic. The hasty repairs will hold, and Deadlock can feel his self-repair chugging away, bolstered by the medical grade cube he’d downed earlier.   
  
He doesn’t like how easily Ratchet claws beneath his plating, getting to the core of everything he’s shoved down and buried. Ratchet’s verbal attacks had been like precision missiles, and Deadlock’s still reeling. He’s furious and ashamed, and he wants this stupid shuttle to find a stupid space station as soon as possible, so he can drop Ratchet off and fly away, hopefully never to see the ghost from his past again.   
  
It’s not right. It’s not fair.   
  
It was supposed to be an easy mission. A way for him to frag off from Turmoil for a while, and try to wheedle his way back to Megatron’s side where he belonged. Megatron’s the one who gave him a designation and a purpose. Megatron did more for him than Ratchet.   
  
That’s the truth Deadlock clings to.   
  
He doesn’t recharge. He stares at the ceiling, measuring rust stains on the metal, and he doesn’t rise until the ship alerts him.   
  
His abdomen still aches, but it’s a dull pain. So long as he doesn’t go into battle, he should be fine. Rising makes him a bit dizzy, but he shakes it off. Can’t afford to show weakness in front of Ratchet.   
  
Doesn’t want to let the medic think, for a moment, he needs to be saved.   
  
Ratchet’s still at the console when Deadlock emerges, slumped in the pilot’s seat, his head braced on his propped arm. He might be dozing, but he startles when he senses Deadlock, and sits up as if trying to pretend he hadn’t been resting. He must have gotten up at some point, though, because Deadlock’s life fluids have been wiped from the chair and the back of Ratchet’s aft.   
  
“I take it we’re almost there?” he asks, curt.   
  
“Yeah.” Deadlock drops his hand from his midsection. He’ll have to be more wary of that unconscious action. “So out of my seat. I’m driving.”   
  
Ratchet snorts, but he heaves himself out of the chair and drops into the navigator’s instead. “You sure you can do this?”   
  
“You mean, can a leaker actually pilot a ship through an asteroid field?” Deadlock asks, his tone sour. He eases into the chair, grimacing at the unwelcoming hard surface of it. These ships weren’t built for comfort. “I guess we’ll see.”   
  
Ratchet scrubs a hand down his face. “Is that how it’s going to be from now on?”   
  
“I don’t know what you mean.” Deadlock plugs into the console, lets the ship feed him system stats and frame updates. It’s going to be hard enough to steer through an asteroid field or two. With the damage they sustained in their escape, it’s only going to be more difficult.   
  
He flips the steering into manual and places his hands on the controls. The ship kicks a little as it switches gears, and in front of them, the first ring of random asteroids looms like drifting death. A treble of unease ripples through his spark, but he swallows it down.   
  
“If you’re waiting for an apology--”  
  
“I know better than to hold a vent.” Deadlock flicks his wrist as the restraints strap around his frame. “Buckle up. I’m not going to be responsible if you take another tumble.”   
  
“Nice of you to care,” Ratchet mutters as the snick-click of the restraints wrapping around him echoes in the bridge. His fingers clamp on the arm of the chair, joints creaking, betraying his unease. “Try not to get us killed.”   
  
Proximity alerts quietly beep, a preemptive warning. The ship rattles.   
  
Deadlock grunts. “This is your last chance to pick a safer route,” he says as they zoom past one of the smaller asteroids on the outermost layer of the first ring.   
  
Ratchet snorts. “Just get us out of here.”   
  
“Sir, yes, sir,” Deadlock sneers.   
  
He punches the accelerator. They plunge into the first belt, and Deadlock’s focuses on the various proximity alerts from the ship’s exterior sensors. He relies on instinct more than skill, pushing the ship to the limits. It twists and turns, ducks and spins, occasionally throttling back and surging forward to avoid the slow-moving but unpredictable obstacles.   
  
Less than ten minutes after they’d entered, they break through on the far end, with a few moments to catch their vents in the empty space between one ring and the next. The second belt, however, is three times as wide and twice as dense, with the asteroids moving faster and in tighter clumps.   
  
Deadlock works his intake, swallowing over a lump. His hands flex around the controls. He’s far from a coward, but he doesn’t want to enter that belt. Not that turning back is an option either.   
  
He fires up the thrusters, pushing forward, cleaving into the cluttered space without waiting for Ratchet to offer a comment. He immerses himself in the onboard nav, bats Drift away from mooning at Ratchet, and does his best to keep them alive.   
  
Luck, as always, is not on his side.   
  
He twists to avoid a small, fast-moving asteroid when another one appears out of nowhere, clipping one of the wings. The whole ship jutters. Lights flash in alarm. He spins, grip tightening on the controls, vents stalling.   
  
Two more lurch at him out of the dark, and Deadlock dives below them, one skating across the top of the ship. A large form looms, and he has to throw them into a sideways spin to avoid it, proximity sensors screeching. He’s too slow to react, jerking them out of the way of another drifting stone, catching the tail end of it along their underside.   
  
Something pings the hull. He never even saw it. He hears, however, the crump of metal bending inward.   
  
He can’t go back. There’s only forward, and now they’re surrounded on all sides, large, slow-moving masses, and small asteroids like bullets, pinging against the hull. Deadlock’s spark stammers fear.   
  
He can only track so many. The ships AI helps, compensates, but he’s hitting more than he’s avoiding. This is a bad idea. This is a terrible, awful, bad idea. They’re going to die out here. His fingers ache, and his shoulders screech when he wrenches the controls, as if that’ll help them avoid the collisions better.   
  
Ratchet’s voice cuts through the fear like a beacon. Like so long ago, when Drift had been seizing, processor melting under the influence of the Syk, and not sure whether he cared that he died like this, trapped in pleasure, or rusting away to ignorance in the gutter.   
  
“Rust you!” Ratchet fumbles at the console, the wild swings of the ship making it hard for him to find purchase with his cable.   
  
He’s trying to plug in.   
  
Silly Autobot. The ship’s not going to allow that.   
  
 _Boom!_    
  
They’re sent into a wild spin, and they bounce off a smaller asteroid, the system shrieking warnings so fast Deadlock can’t read them.   
  
“Let me in!” Ratchet snarls as he jams his cable into the port.   
  
Deadlock registers him knocking at the firewall door, requesting access, not even bothering with politeness, but full on banging.   
  
“Damn it, Deadlock. Let me help!” Ratchet shouts as another small asteroid pings the side of the craft. There’s an ominous creak.   
  
The ship screams damage at him. They’re halfway through. They can’t turn back. They can only move forward. Somewhere, past the shifting mass of danger, is freedom.   
  
They aren’t going to make it.   
  
“Deadlock!”  
  
He grants Ratchet access, and hopes he’s not making a mistake. Ratchet surges into the system, extending his awareness into everything, and Deadlock braces, waiting for him to take over. Instead, Ratchet offers himself as a buffer, inviting Deadlock to lean on him, to share his perceptions.   
  
There’s no time to consider the ramifications.   
  
Deadlock accepts.   
  
The world explodes into possibilities. Perimeter sensors sharpen, allowing him a faster reaction time. His world narrows to pinpoint precision, and he whips the controls, sending the ship into a tight spin, narrowly avoiding a collision with a rapidly approaching asteroid.   
  
Warnings scream and flash. The ship creaks, straining against the weight of the inertia. The world turns upside down. Ratchet vents heavily next to him. Deadlock grimaces under the strain of his own systems, can feel the tug on Ratchet’s.  
  
Two-thirds of the way through now. He glimpses open space before another asteroid whirls into his path. He dives, down and down, skidding up under a large obstacle, the top of the ship skating the bottom in a jarring screech.   
  
He pulls back, curves around another, starts to climb again, toward what is relatively up, not that there’s such a thing in space.   
  
 _Crash!_  
  
Something small, but too fast for the sensors to register, slams into a stabilizing wing, shearing it in half. The ship shrieks at him as the wing goes flying off into space.   
  
Deadlock snarls a curse as he fights through the chaos. Smaller asteroids plink against the hull as he struggles to avoid the larger ones, spinning and dancing in front of him. The ship wobbles, steering nearly impossible, and his grip on the controls is so tight, his knuckles ache from the effort.   
  
Two asteroids collide in front of him and send a smaller piece shearing off in their direction. Deadlock jerks the controls to avoid it, and the perimeter sensors flash, too late for him to react. A large asteroid slams into their rear, taking out two of the three thrusters.   
  
They drop, spinning wildly.   
  
Deadlock yanks on the controls, denta gritted, processor aching from the hundreds of possibilities streaming through his cortex. He leans on Ratchet as much as he can, hearing the medic hiss at the effort, as the ship twirls. It falls, as much as one can fall, belching smoke and pieces of the hull flying off, impacting passing asteroids.   
  
Deadlock pulls hard, and the ship abruptly curves, narrowly avoiding a collision with an asteroid of the same size, one that would have blasted them to bits. A smaller one slams into the port-side. A stabilizing wing crumples, denting inward, caving in the hull. Integrity warnings flash yellow through the cockpit.   
  
For a brief moment, he glimpses a free path out of the field, achingly close. And then a large asteroid drifts in the way, eclipsing the line to freedom, on a direct path to intercept.   
  
Realization strikes Deadlock in the same moment it hits Ratchet. He braces for impact, pouring all his might into softening the crash as much as possible. Maybe they’ll survive. Maybe they’ll get lucky.   
  
The restraints tighten around his armor. His joints creak and struts ache.   
  
The surface of the asteroid rushes up to meet them, pockmarked with impacts from thousands of years of drifting. Other bits of metal glitter on the surface – possible prior crashes – and it’s only a small consolation that they won’t be the first to meet their demise here.   
  
The ship nosedives, and at the last minute, Deadlock punches the accelerator and jerks on the controls. The remaining rear thruster sputters and burns, but gives them just enough boost the belly of the ship skates over the surface, catching on rocky rises to slow it’s inertia. Metal screeches and groans, and more bits fall off the ship. Deadlock and Ratchet jostle inside the ship, the restraints creaking, lashing tight around them.   
  
Deadlock yanks back, and pops the landing gears, trying to bring them to a halt. The struts make a horrendous noise as they dig into the planet’s surface.   
  
The hull creaks. Something crashes. The windshield splinters.   
  
There’s a near, but distant boom as one of the stabilizing thrusters bursts into flames. Grit flies up and rains down, pinging against the windshield and the hull. Smoke billows into the narrow space of the cockpit as electricity crackles over the console, which starts spitting sparks at them. One of the storage compartments pops open, sending odds and ends bouncing around the interior.   
  
Ratchet hisses as a large crate slams into his right shoulder, and the distinct pop of it slipping out of socket makes Deadlock cringe. A grating rumble echoes through the interior, more grit spilling up and over the windshield.   
  
The ship howls like a wounded animal, scraping, grinding, bits shearing off, flinging away behind them, until it comes to a sudden, jerking halt. Deadlock tosses around in the chair, the restraints creaking to hold him in place. Ratchet hisses again, his dislocated shoulder flopping around before he grabs his arm with his other hand.   
  
Noise fill the compartment. The console spits sparks. Deadlock can’t see anything through a windshield covered in detritus. His audials ring from the emergency alerts, until he peels his fingers free from the controls and flicks off the auditory system.   
  
Silence. Save for the minutiae of noise from the wrecked ship. The lights flash, and Deadlock spares another burst of effort to switch off the visual system, casting the interior of the ship in dim. The emergency lights along the bottom stay lit, and there’s a faint glow from the flickering console.   
  
Deadlock wheezes, peels his other hand free.   
  
They’re alive. They survived. Their ship is wrecked, and they’ve crash-landed on an asteroid floating aimlessly in the middle of a treacherous belt, but they’re alive.   
  
“Ratchet?” Deadlock’s voice is thick with static. “You alive over there?”   
  
“Course I am.”   
  
“Just checking.”   
  
Deadlock disengages the restraints and slides a bit forward in the seat as a result. The ship must be canted at an angle.   
  
Good to know.   
  
He carefully pokes the ship’s internal system for a status update and cringes when a steady stream of damage slices into his cortex. Well, that’s not good.   
  
“This was a terrible idea,” Ratchet grunts. His own restraints click off, slithering back into their slots. He clutches his injured shoulder, his vents as raspy as Deadlock’s own.   
  
“It was your idea,” Deadlock reminds him.   
  
The system pings with an organized damage review, and Deadlock’s jaw drops. One stabilizing wing is gone, lost to space, the other severely damaged with a long crack running through it. Two of the three rear thrusters are offline, and the landing gears sheared off at some point back. There are cracks in the transteel of the windscreen, he could probably see them if it wasn’t for the dirt.   
  
The integrity of the hull is at a measly forty percent. The communications array is flat-out gone, and Deadlock bets all they’ll find is an empty bracket. The control console is only fifty percent functional, with the other fifty percent being what’s currently smoking and crackling.   
  
They are, in a word,  _fragged_.   
  
He disconnects from the system to stop the internal screaming and is rewarded with blissful silence. An odd silence, actually, because the background hum of Ratchet’s connection is gone, too, and he hadn’t realized until this moment how comforting it was. That pinpoint focus and perception vanishes, and if Deadlock weren’t sitting, he’d have staggered from the loss.   
  
Well. Won’t be doing that again, thank you very much.   
  
Ratchet tucks his dislocated arm against his abdomen and disconnects from the console. His movements are slow, aching, and only then does Deadlock catch sight of his back.  
  
There’s a wound there, crusted over with dried energon, probably incurred in their desperate flight from the Penta base. Ratchet had said nothing, and Deadlock hadn’t noticed. But the crash must have torn the tentative seal because it’s seeping in sluggish rivulets down Ratchet’s back, far too awkwardly placed for Ratchet to tend to it himself.   
  
“You’re hurt,” Deadlock says, before he remembers he’s not supposed to care.   
  
“Which must come as a shock since we crash-landed in the middle of an asteroid belt,” Ratchet drawls. “How fragged are we?”   
  
“Fragged.” Deadlock leverages himself to his feet, his internals aching from the force of the impact. At least his welds remain strong. “Come on. Let me help you with that shoulder.”   
  
Ratchet rolls his neck until he can look up at Deadlock. “Why?”   
  
“Because you need two working arms,” Deadlock snaps, anger flushing through his lines, helping to chase out the lingering jitteriness.   
  
Ratchet’s field thrums beneath Deadlock’s perception, and a flush of shame permeates it. He awkwardly hauls himself to his feet, cupping his dislocated arm, and edges around the chair so he’s in reach.   
  
“Get it over with,” he says, and lets his arm dangle, free hand gripping the back of the chair.   
  
Any mech worth his coolant who’s managed to survive the war knows how to pop a joint back into place.   
  
Deadlock grips his arm, careful and gentle. “You want me to count?”   
  
“Just do it,” Ratchet snarls through gritted teeth.   
  
Deadlock flexes his grip, reading the rise and fall of Ratchet’s field, the flickering of his attention. “I could distract you with a kiss,” he says.   
  
Ratchet startles. “Wha--”  
  
 _Pop_.   
  
Ratchet almost jerks free of his grip as Deadlock twists and pulls in a quick motion, slotting the joint back into place. Ratchet sucks in a vent. His field wavers, face going a pale, and his grip on the chair tightens.   
  
“Thanks,” he hisses out.   
  
“I owed you one,” Deadlock replies with a lift of one shoulder. He turns away, staring into the mess that is the latter half of the ship.   
  
Supplies from the storage compartment scatter across the floor. Something has broken open, spilling its contents in a wet arc glinting in the ocher glow of the emergency runners. The compartment door swings lazily in the ship’s tilt. Smoke cloaks the air with a dull haze.   
  
Ratchet steps up beside him, fingers slipping up under his own armor to massage at the bruised joint. “What a mess.”   
  
“Mmm.” Deadlock glances at his shoulder, where the impact of the object left a long scrape. “What hit you?”   
  
Ratchet winces and kicks at a metal crate, forcing it into view. The red and white stripes and familiar symbol stares up at them mockingly.   
  
Deadlock stares back. Ratchet does, too.   
  
Despite it all, Deadlock laughs. He laughs until the ache in his abdomen turns the laughter into a raspy sound, and the force of Ratchet’s glare reaches fusion cannon levels.   
  
“It’s not funny,” he says, but his lips twitch like he’s swallowing his own amusement.   
  
“It’s ironic,” Deadlock snorts.   
  
Ratchet had been struck by the ship’s spare medkit.   
  
Ratchet growls and crouches, scooping up the medkit and tucking it under his arm. “If we didn’t need it, I’d chuck it out the cargo door.”   
  
“Where it would then land right outside the ship.” Deadlock’s lips curl, and it takes all he has to swallow his amusement before the twitch on Ratchet’s face turns further thunderous. “Points for the sentiment though.”   
  
He frowns at the mess. The medkit’s not the only thing to have been expunged from the storage compartment. There’s a few rolls of static mesh, a polishing kit – the oil is what’s currently leaking over the floor, spare blaster cartridges which look to be in desperate need of charging, and tiny tubes of energon flavor rolling around underfoot.   
  
The mess will keep.   
  
Deadlock gingerly wades through it and searches the dim for the access panel to the rear bay. The panel is dull, nonfunctional, so he punches through the emergency release and yanks it free. A grating, grinding noise precedes the doors as they open, only to pause halfway. Air whooshes out, sucked into the empty vacuum of space.  
  
Deadlock waits.   
  
Click-click-click goes the sliding mechanism visibly, and then it honks loud enough for Drift to feel the vibrations underfoot. A small light above the rear bay doors starts to blink. The sign next to it reads ‘maintenance needed’.   
  
Well. You don’t say.   
  
Deadlock sighs and slips into the narrow gap, bracing his back against one side and shoving his palm against the other. He bears down, throwing his weight in both directions, scraping open the door by several more inches. Not fully open, but just enough both he and his significantly wider medic sorta-ally can get through.   
  
Ratchet follows him without comment. They step out onto a sandy, rocky surface, colored in shades of gray and pale brown, the evidence of their crash streaking behind them in a black and blue line. Spilled energon. Scorched earth. Bits and pieces of the hull and their ship scattered like so much detritus.   
  
The air reeks of smoke and flame.   
  
Deadlock hustles far enough that he can turn back and look at the ship. His spark tightens into a small ball. One thruster is a smoking, blackened pit. A second one is dinged, but potentially salvageable. The third appears, from the outside, to be fully functional.   
  
Ratchet’s field spikes with outrage. Deadlock’s a bit relieved he can’t hear the curses the medic must be spewing. He’s not stupid. He can see the reality of their situation.   
  
Deadlock breaks into a light jog, circling wide around the ship. He counts more pieces missing from the hull than the hull has managed to keep, baring circuitry and bits to the elements. The communications array isn’t damaged, it’s simply gone, snapped off as though it had never existed. The windshield is indeed cracked, and the nose of the ship is half-buried in the sandy morass.   
  
One stabilizing wing is missing, sheared off at the base, a jagged rent that speaks of a collision. The other is bent, plating stretched and threatening to tear. The anterior thrusters are buried in the dirt and so they must be choked with detritus.   
  
There’s no way this ship is going to fly again.   
  
He circles back to Ratchet, ready to deliver a grim prognosis. The medic hasn’t moved from the few steps he’d taken outside the rear bay. He’s staring at the ship, his expression running the gamut from anger to despair. His uninjured hand curls into light fists at his side, his armor tightly compacted.   
  
“We’re stuck here,” he says on a narrow-comm beam, flat, his optics not even bothering to acknowledge Deadlock.   
  
“Looks like,” Deadlock replies on the same narrow-bond. Lucky they’re so close, they don’t have to exchange any kind of permissions. “Don’t think we can get her running again. But if we’re lucky, we can manage to rig some type of SOS.”   
  
Ratchet snorts and half-turns to Deadlock, his optics as flat as his tone. “And who’s going to pick it up, all the way out here?”   
  
Deadlock rolls his shoulders. “Before we crashed, I saw how close we were to the exit. The waystation isn’t far. If we get a strong enough signal, someone will pick it up.” He trudges back toward the rear hatch. “Whether or not they’ll care, I don’t know.”   
  
“Great.” Ratchet slogs after him, his steps slow and measured. “Stuck forever on an asteroid with a Decepticon. What a wonderful vacation.”   
  
“Oh, we’ll rust to death long before it becomes forever,” Deadlock says.   
  
“I don’t know which is better.”   
  
Deadlock snorts and waits for Ratchet to enter before he attempts to wedge the door shut. Metal resists at first, and it’s not until Ratchet takes up the other side that they are able to force the doors back into place. Magnetics lock, and the pressure system hisses as atmosphere returns to the compartment.   
  
It’s not much protection, but it’s better than being caught unaware by something that may or may not live on this asteroid. Deadlock’s heard the stories of organic dwellers. He doesn’t want to be anything’s meal.   
  
“You might bleed out first,” Deadlock says aloud, with a pointed look to the wound still seeping on Ratchet’s back. It seems to be worse the more he moves.   
  
“I’m fine.”   
  
“No. You’re not.” He scoops the medkit out of the open storage compartment, where Ratchet had made the barest amount of effort to put it back. He kicks a smaller crate toward the medic, who stares at him with thinly narrowed optics. “You’re all I got right now, and I’m not being picked up by Autobots with their dead CMO. Sit.”   
  
Ratchet stares at him, grumbles subvocally, and sits down with all the grace of a petulant sparkling. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing?”   
  
“I’m still alive, aren’t I?” Deadlock rolls his optics. “I think a simple patch job is within my skillset. So sorry that all you’ve got is a leaker to help you out.”   
  
Ratchet’s jaw sets. “Stop calling yourself that.”   
  
“Isn’t it true?” Deadlock’s tone is far from innocent, but he has to admit, he loves the spike of shame and regret that fills Ratchet’s field whenever he points it out. Feels like a tiny victory every time. “Or maybe it’s the part where I’m also a murderer. Not that it’s hypocritical of you to think so or anything.”   
  
He slips behind Ratchet and eyes the wound. It looks like a sharpened projectile had slid through his armor plates at an angle. It’s a graze, a deep one, but at least the projectile hadn’t lodged in him. Deadlock suspects Ratchet would have spoken up if that were the case.   
  
“We’re going to be stuck here for who knows how much longer. Together,” Ratchet says, resignation thick in his tone. “Perhaps we can manage to be civil to each other.”   
  
Deadlock dampens a mesh cloth with cleanser and dabs at the streaks of dried energon, all the better to see the wound. “You started it,” he says.   
  
“Fair enough.” Ratchet tilts his head and slumps forward, elbows braced on his knees and making it easier for Deadlock to tend the injury. “I will refrain from remarking on your Decepticon background.”   
  
Deadlock laughs and tosses the dirty mesh cloth over his shoulder. “Wow. That sounds like it hurts. Kind of you to offer though.” He peers at the gradual seep of energon. There’s a few nicked lines, but nothing a squirt of temporary sealant can’t handle.   
  
Ratchet sighs.   
  
“Look,” Deadlock says. “I’m just saying. We’re not friends. We’re not allies. This truce is pitslag. We’re enemies. It’s in our nature.” He slaps static mesh over the sealant, keeping it in place. There’s an ugly gray patch on Ratchet’s back now, but it’s better than the alternative.   
  
“You know, there was a time Cybertron wasn’t divided in two factions,” Ratchet says. He tries to reach back, touch the static mesh, but can’t quite manage. He drops his hand instead. “Even Megatron and Optimus were friends once.”   
  
Deadlock snorts and steps back, dumping santizer on his hands to wash off the tackiness of Ratchet’s energon. “Look how well that worked out.”   
  
“If you recall, Megatron was the one who opted to try and kill Optimus rather than take his hand.” Ratchet rises, joints creaking, and half-turns to look at Deadlock, his expression twisted with distaste.   
  
Deadlock tilts his head. “Yeah, and if you had any idea the kind of slag we’ve had to endure, you wouldn’t have trusted someone with that badge on their chestplate either.” He pokes Ratchet’s Autobot brand pointedly. “You Autobots wear it with pride. But all we can see is a symbol of slavery.”   
  
Ratchet glares. “The Senate corrupted what this stands for. We’re trying to reclaim it.”   
  
“You can’t take something that noxious and pretend you’re turning it into something good.” Deadlock slams the medkit shut and shoves it into the compartment where it belonged. “Doesn’t work that way.”   
  
“And you can’t pretend your intentions are honorable when your actions reflect a desire for power at any cost,” Ratchet argues.   
  
Deadlock twists his jaw. He points his back to Ratchet and crouches, focusing long and hard at the mess covering the floor. “You should recharge,” he says, because if he keeps going with this, he’ll strike Ratchet, and that isn’t going to help either of them. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”   
  
He expects protests. Accusations. A long-suffering sigh of irritation. He expects Ratchet to push the issue, to remind him of his faults, his failures, of how awful the Decepticons are.   
  
Ratchet says nothing. He stomps past Deadlock, coming within inches of their armor brushing, and closes himself in the small recharge chamber. At least that door still functions. It’s the only privacy they have.   
  
They don’t have a proper washrack. It’s a small thing, barely big enough for one, and all it does is use the same solvent over and over again, running it through a reprocessing cycle after every use. At some point, it can’t possibly function as a cleaner, can it?   
  
Deadlock grits his denta and starts cleaning up the mess the crash caused. He might as well, if they’re going to survive here for the foreseeable future. It’s a bit like something out of a night purge, but like the Pit he’s going to lie down and wait to offline.   
  
He’s survived much, much worse things than this.   
  
*


	5. Chapter 5

Ratchet recharges not because Deadlock told him to, but because he hadn’t had a decent charge period since the Pentas dragged him to their trading meet. He doesn’t so much slip into recharge as he plummets into it, and is immediately plagued by purges, positive and negative alike.   
  
He onlines later, not feeling rested at all, and he stiffly climbs out of the berth, his back aching, his shoulder echoing it, and his system pinging him for energon. He’s only low because of the injury he ignored, so it’s his own fault.   
  
He pulls one of his last cubes of medgrade out of his subspace and chugs it too quick to taste it. The thick, chalky energon sloughs over his glossa and seeps down his intake, settling in his tank like a weight. It’s slag for taste, but it’ll keep him going for days yet, if he’s frugal with energy expenditure.   
  
He hopes there’s some kind of solar generator on board. He hopes the random spin and drift of the asteroid puts them in range of solar rays. He hopes said random travel doesn’t end up in a collision with another asteroid, with their sorry excuse for a landing caught between.   
  
Ratchet lingers on the edge of the berth for several minutes. He massages his bruised shoulder, rolls it in the socket. A quick scan informs him Deadlock had done a fair job relocating it. It should fully heal within a couple of Cybertronian days.   
  
Small favor.   
  
He doesn’t let himself linger too much longer. He has no desire to be trapped here indefinitely. They have much work to do if there’s any hope of contacting rescue or making some kind of repair to the wreck that’ll get them close to safety. If Deadlock had been telling the truth, and they are that close to the end of the belt, it might be worth it to try.   
  
He steps out of the recharge room. Deadlock isn’t in sight, but there’s a hatch in the floor that’s propped open. Ratchet stands over it and spots Deadlock a level below, hands on his hips as he glares at what constitutes an engine for the shuttle. He doesn’t appear to be armed.   
  
“About time you woke up,” he calls up to Ratchet, without visually acknowledging his presence. “Do you know anything about engines?”   
  
“That’s a dumb question.”   
  
“Yeah. I thought so, too.” Deadlock drops his hands and pokes at something that’s sparking. A piece of it breaks down, slips from his fingers, and clatters to the ground. “Well, that happened.”   
  
Ratchet crouches on the edge and peers down. There’s a mess of loose wires, popped panels, dimly glowing emergency lights, and the occasionally sparking console. In theory, he should be able to do something about it. A ship should not be so different from a Cybertronian. But it is.   
  
“The warp drive’s shot, not that it matters since the ship can’t fly,” Deadlock continues and pokes at something else, which spits sparks at him. “That might be the communications array control.”   
  
“Wonderful.”   
  
“Yeah, I thought so, too.” Deadlock folds his arms over his chest. He tilts his head. “Well, staring at this isn’t doing me any good. Back to what I can actually do.” He turns and climbs out of the hatch.   
  
“And what’s that?” Ratchet asks as he pushes himself upright, knees creaking and betraying his age.   
  
Deadlock shoves his fingers into the cracks of the rear door, getting a good grip. “Digging us out.”   
  
 _Screech!_  
  
Inch by inch, the hatch doors squeak open, the atmosphere rushing out in a wild wind. Ratchet scowls and abruptly switches to internal comm as the hatch opens just far enough for Deadlock to fit through.   
  
“The ship can’t fly,” Ratchet points out.   
  
“No, not yet it can’t. But maybe we can get it airborne.” Deadlock shrugs and slips through the narrow opening. He turns around, optics flicking around the exterior. “Maneuverability will be slag, but we don’t have far to go.”   
  
Ratchet twists his jaw and resists the urge to fold his arms. He’s too aware of how much that makes him appear the disapproving instructor. “We need to maneuver to get past the deadly ring of asteroids between us and the waystation.”   
  
Deadlock’s expression closes off, not a hint of emotion to be seen. “If you’ve got a better idea, be sure to share with the class.” His optics drop to the hatch below Ratchet. “If you don’t, stop judging my efforts and start putting in some of your own.”   
  
“I’m a medic, not an engineer,” Ratchet grounds out. “But I’ll see what I can do.”   
  
“Don’t strain yourself too hard,” Deadlock replies sweetly.   
  
That’s the end of that.   
  
Deadlock starts digging outside – or at least Ratchet assumes he does. He can’t hear a thing without atmosphere to carry the sound. Meanwhile, Ratchet starts poking around the interior of the ship which is much neater and cleaner than it had been earlier. Deadlock must have tidied.   
  
Decepticons. Tidying. Somehow, it doesn’t connect in his head.   
  
He plops down in front of the console, staring glumly at the charred circuits, the faint tang of smoke in the air, the layer of silt on the windshield. He has no idea where to begin, but he supposes it’s best to start somewhere. He digs out a couple bins of spare parts from the bottom half of the storage compartment and stacks them on the second chair.   
  
He eyes the console, compares broken bits with spare bits, and starts replacing what he can match without a doubt. There’s no instruction manual to be found, he suspects if there were, it would all be digital anyway. Luckily, he can still access the console – Deadlock must not have erased his permissions. What would be the point? It’s not like Ratchet can steal the ship out from under him.   
  
It’s slow going. Slow as an IV drip. But it’s progress, however miniscule.   
  
Right now, Ratchet will take what he can get.   
  


~

  
  
A week passes by in such a manner. Or at least, a week as best Ratchet can figure. They alternate using the recharge room. They speak only when necessary.   
  
Deadlock works outside when Ratchet is online. He has no idea what Deadlock does while Ratchet recharges. In the meantime, Ratchet concentrates his efforts on the bridge console and occasionally pokes at the engine and primary controls in the hatch.   
  
It starts to feel like he’s putting in effort without any results, mostly to trick himself into thinking there’s forward motion, while slowly and surely sliding into the dread that there’s nothing they can do. They’re stuck. He doesn’t want to be stuck, but inevitability creeps up on him.   
  
Ratchet buries that concern and tries harder, calling upon hours and hours of Wheeljack babbling at him, explaining things that go well beyond Ratchet’s understanding of engineering. He’d listened, because Wheeljack’s passion has always been a sight to behold, but comprehension had been vague at best. He pokes at the system, stirring the sluggish, minimal AI into providing much-needed answers.   
  
He and Deadlock don’t talk, except for brief exchanges.   
  
“Console’s a third fixed.”   
  
“Almost got the tertiary thruster dug out.”   
  
“Still no reception on the comms.”   
  
“Got that solar generator set up if we get so lucky.”   
  
The rest is silence. It’s not companionable. Instead, it ripples and wheezes with an undercurrent of tension. They recharge in shifts, and the berth smells of Deadlock when Ratchet trudges in there for his turn. He wonders if Deadlock notices it smelling of Ratchet when the tables are turned.   
  
He wonders why he cares.   
  
It’s not like he wanders outside occasionally, watching Deadlock shovel with something he’s made of what looks like tape, a broken strut, and a piece of the hull. The steady scrape-toss, scrape-toss of a mech focused on his task. Ratchet’s never paused to admire Deadlock’s frame – heavier, stronger, thicker, built for battle – compared to what Drift had been – thin, no protection, full of open seams, and scarred by living.   
  
Deadlock and Drift are two sides of the same coin. Can’t have one without the other. Right now, Deadlock is the one who keeps staring back at Ratchet, and he wonders if there’s any chance of saving Drift on the other side. Wonders if maybe Deadlock isn’t right, that it’s the Autobots’ fault he ended up where he is.   
  
He should have done more.   
  
Guilt is a heavy burden.   
  
Ratchet always trudges back indoors without saying a word. He doesn’t know if Deadlock ever notices him.   
  
He supposes it doesn’t matter.   
  
A week is a long time to work tirelessly in an effort most likely futile. But they keep going.   
  
What else can they do?  
  


~

  
  
There’s such a thing as too much rest.   
  
They’ve been recharging in shifts, but Ratchet can’t stay cooped up in a small room for half a cycle anymore. So when he onlines, instead of lingering in the berth until what he feels is an appropriate time, he swings his legs over the edge and gets up.   
  
He surges out of the berthroom without any subtlety, mostly because he suspects Deadlock is going to be outside, doing whatever it is Deadlock does to pretend he’s contributing to their bid for rescue.   
  
Deadlock is not outside. He’s actually sitting at a table he must have pulled out of a fold out portion of the wall. It’s small, with a booth behind it, and spread out across the surface are the pieces of his two blasters. He’s in the midst of disassembling, cleaning, and reassembling them, Ratchet assumes.   
  
He blinks. Then blinks again. “Are we expecting battle some time soon?”   
  
“The only thing worst than being caught unprepared is knowing you could have been and opted not to,” Deadlock replies in a bland tone. He doesn’t look up, instead continuing to inspect the components of his blaster as if they hold the mysteries of the universe.   
  
“Isn’t that a waste of time?” Ratchet asks because now he’s thinking of his own blaster, tumbled into his subspace without so much as a second thought. Does it even have anything left of a charge?  
  
It’s a bit foolish of him, now that he thinks about it. Just because Deadlock is playing nice right now, doesn’t mean he’s not going to change his mind at a later date. Ratchet is putting too much trust into the memory of a mech he once saved.   
  
“I’m stuck in a crashed tin can with an Autobot, of course it’s not,” Deadlock says with the sort of huffy tone of someone speaking to an idiot.   
  
Ratchet rolls his optics. “We’ve already established I’m not going to kill you.” If anyone should be concerned about the threat of attack, it should be Ratchet.   
  
“Can’t be too careful.” Deadlock looks up then and grins, flashing his sharpened denta at Ratchet as though too aware of how uneasy Ratchet is around him. “Besides, what else am I going to do?”   
  
“Fix the ship?” Ratchet points out, both hands gesturing to the toppled wreck around him. “The engine? The communications array? Any of the dozen things that are broken around here?”   
  
Deadlock sets down one shining part and picks up another. “Do I look like an engineer?” he asks with a raised orbital ridge, his gaze never wandering from Ratchet. “Why don’t you fix it?”   
  
“I’m a doctor, not an engineer,” Ratchet retorts.   
  
“And I’m a warrior, not a scientist.” Deadlock shrugs, and his hands are astonishingly nimble as they clean and polish the parts of his blasters without looking. “If I stare at that thing any longer, my processor’s gonna melt. So I’m taking a break. Gotta problem with that?” There’s challenge in his tone, in the soft rev of his engine.   
  
It’s like he’s daring Ratchet to make it a problem. Maybe he wants to fight. Maybe the tension of their shared space is getting to him, as much as it’s getting to Ratchet.   
  
It’s hard to spend so much time buried in another mech’s energy field. Secrets become a muddled mess. All he can smell and taste is Deadlock in the air. His emotions are a tangle of guilt and anger, and blast it all, deep down in the pit of his tanks, arousal. Attraction.   
  
Because Ratchet is weak, and Deadlock is one fine piece of work. Kudos to whomever had designed his frame upgrades, because they certainly know how to put a mech together. Almost as if they’d known exactly what revs Ratchet’s engine the most.   
  
“Even if I did, I’m not your CO,” Ratchet finally bites out. He glances at the main console, the stray wires, the mix of burnt components and shiny new components and still, all it does is glare emergency-orange at them.   
  
“Nope.” Deadlock pops the word, calling Ratchet’s attention back, and gestures to the rickety chair across from him. “Have a seat. Take a break. This is your vacation right?”   
  
Ratchet eyes him for a long moment before he pulls out the stool and lowers himself into it, tense as he waits for it crumple beneath him. But it holds.   
  
There’s enough space on the table in front of him. He pulls out his own blaster and sets it on the surface. The indicator reads a quarter charge.   
  
“For lack of a better word.” Ratchet pops out the charge pack and sets it aside. If there’s not a spare around here, he’ll have to hope there’s a charging dock.   
  
“Why?” Deadlock asks.   
  
Ratchet frowns. “Why what?” He fumbles with the blaster. He can’t remember the last time he fully disassembled it. He’d always given it to Ironhide when it needed any kind of maintenance.   
  
He’s a medic, not a weapons specialist. He’s not supposed to know how to manage weapons. He’s supposed to save lives, not take them.   
  
“Why are you on vacation in the middle of a war?” Deadlock asks, and at least his tone is curious rather than accusatory. “Seems kind of stupid, right?”   
  
Ratchet grunts and fumbles with a lever, though he’s not sure what it does. “It wasn’t my idea. Optimus seems to think I needed space.”   
  
Deadlock sighs. “Give it to me.”   
  
Ratchet looks up, blinking at the segue. “What?”   
  
Deadlock snaps his fingers and leans across the table, elbow braced on one of his blaster’s components. “Your blaster. You’re going to break it if you keep doing that.”   
  
Ratchet hesitates.   
  
Deadlock rolls his optics. “If I wanted to hurt you, I’d do it with the spare, fully assembled blaster in my subspace, not the one you’re about to hand me.”   
  
“Charity doesn’t seem like something you’re keen on,” Ratchet says.   
  
“It physically hurts me to watch you struggle with that.” Deadlock snaps his fingers again, his smirk a shade too superior to be anything but mocking. “Or you could ruin it and then have no weapon. It’s all the same to me.”   
  
Ratchet presses his lips together and hands the blaster over. Deadlock can’t accept it like a normal mech, no. He has to run his fingers along Ratchet’s before he slips the blaster from Ratchet’s grasp and then salutes him with it.   
  
“Thank you for your trust,” he drawls, except it rings of mockery. He looks at the blaster, turning it this way and that. “Nothing special about this, I see. Pretty standard.”   
  
Ratchet pulls out a datapad so he can have something to do with his hands. He digs through the archives, looking for anything to use as a distraction. He gets lucky. There’s a deleted file in the bin, a fantasy novella he used to think he’d never have time to read.   
  
“I’m a medic. It’s purely for self-defense.”   
  
“Uh huh. And how many mechs have you killed with it?”   
  
Ratchet doesn’t dignify that question with a response. He listens to Deadlock disassemble the blaster with a few easy twists of his hands. He pretends to focus on his datapad, on the re-discovery of an old interest. Somehow, it doesn’t seem interesting anymore.   
  
“Or I guess they don’t count because they are Decepticons.”   
  
Ratchet’s engine growls. “Forty-two,” he says, and his spark spins and spins into a tiny ball. He’s discharged his weapon one-hundred and sixty-eight times since the official start of the war.   
  
Forty-two of those discharges have resulted in the death of another Cybertronian.   
  
He wishes he could say he knows their names or he’s memorized their faces, but that would be a lie. He doesn’t remember anything but the weight of their deaths on his conscience, the cracks in his medical coding each taken spark leaves behind. Forty-two sparks are a heavy burden for a medic to bear.   
  
Ratchet’s not a stranger to death. He’s had mechs die on him before, usually because he wasn’t skilled enough to save them, or there was no chance to save them in the first place, or for some reason out of his control. He’s bowed his head over more frames than he can count – and yes, those names he recalls. Those names are in a file he keeps buried deep, deep in his processor. On particularly dark times, he pulls that file out and reads it, to remind himself what he does and doesn’t deserve.   
  
But those deaths are different. Those are not his  _fault_. Yes, he wasn’t good enough, skilled enough, capable of miracles. He hadn’t, however, pulled the trigger. He hadn’t looked into those mech’s optics, saw a living mech, and decided their life was his to end.   
  
He had stared into the face of forty-two mechs and decided his life was worth more than theirs. He’d chosen to live.   
  
His coding has yet to forgive him for it. He doubts it ever will.   
  
“Huh,” Deadlock says, not a trace of emotion in the reply. Ratchet’s blaster falls to his pieces in his hands, and each one is treated to the same intense cleaning as Deadlock’s own.   
  
“I suppose your count is much larger,” Ratchet says, trying to sound casual, but failing. He knows it comes across as an accusation.   
  
“I wouldn’t know,” Deadlock replies, light, distracted. “I haven’t been keeping count.” He pauses and looks up, head tilted, lips curled. “I’ve killed a lot of Autobots, medic. That kind of what happens in war. You kill the mechs who are trying to kill you back.”   
  
Ratchet’s vents hitch.   
  
Deadlock’s baiting him. He knows the Decepticon is. There’s challenge in Deadlock’s tone, in the glint of his optics, in the way he’s bracing himself, preparing for a shouting match.   
  
“Yes,” Ratchet says, and he knows it sounds strangled, but there’s no point in picking a fight. They’re stuck here together. “I suppose that’s true.”   
  
He lies.   
  
Or perhaps lie isn’t the correct term. He dismisses a topic point that will only lead them around and around in circles. Deadlock might be indifferent to the amount of deaths on his conscience, but Ratchet doesn’t have that luxury. Can’t afford to have that luxury.   
  
They all have their coping mechanisms.   
  
What’s that idiom Prowl loves to spout at them from time to time? Especially when he’s proposing a plan of action Optimus vehemently declines, even if it would be a success and ensure a quicker end to the war?   
  
“All villains are heroes in their own stories.”   
  
Deadlock reassembles Ratchet’s blaster and hands it across the table, grip first. “As long as you don’t try to kill me, I’m not going to try and kill you,” he says as Ratchet’s fingers close around the grip.   
  
“Noted.”   
  
Deadlock releases the blaster, and Ratchet takes it back. The charge is still at a quarter, but it’s gleaming like new, and he has no doubt that if he has to use it, there will be no issues.   
  
“Thank you,” Ratchet says.   
  
Deadlock blinks. “You’re welcome.”   
  
Ratchet tucks the blaster away and excuses himself, slipping out of the ship without another word. There’s a strange churning sensation in his tank, he can’t quite define it. For them, that is darn near friendly.   
  
It’s better, he thinks. If they’re stuck like this indefinitely, it’s better that they get along.   
  
Outside, it’s chilly and still. Above is a noiseless clash of asteroid against asteroid, dancing and spinning through space.   
  
Ratchet circles around the ship, taking in Deadlock’s handiwork. He’s made steady progress on digging them out. Another week or so, and they might have enough solid ground to make a decent launch – if they can get the engine working and repair the thrusters enough to make that first, important push.   
  
There’s a long line of debris behind them, delineating the track of their crash. Bits and pieces of the broken ship dot the ground.   
  
It occurs to Ratchet that some of the parts they are missing might be in that debris path. At the very least, they can reclaim pieces of the hull or other things to repurpose them. It probably wouldn’t hurt to venture a bit further from the crash site either.   
  
Right now, they think they’re alone on this asteroid. It might be nice to know for sure. Who knows? Maybe they’ll get lucky and there’s another crashed ship or an abandoned trading station or something out there that’ll save them.   
  
Ratchet heads back into the ship, slipping through the narrow rear doors. He looks to the table, but it’s empty, Deadlock’s blasters gone from the surface. It’s been wiped down, all traces of grease and filth gone.   
  
Ratchet cocks his head, but the washrack isn’t running. The door to the recharge room is closed.   
  
Well, there’s always tomorrow.   
  
It’s not like they’re going anywhere anytime soon.   
  
Ratchet plops down at the main console and sighs as he stares at the frayed wires and charred components.  
  
He might as well get back to work.   
  


*


	6. Chapter 6

Deadlock tosses and turns on the berth, Ratchet’s sincere ‘thank you’ echoing in his audials. He’d expected more snarky comebacks, more implications of how much of a monster Deadlock had become. He’d expected Ratchet to press, to force the argument.   
  
Once again, Ratchet has ignored his expectations.   
  
It’s disconcerting.   
  
There’s only so much recharge one can get, and right now, Deadlock is full up. But the idea of venturing out where Ratchet is very much online fills him with a mingling sense of dread and excitement. He doesn’t know which emotion bothers him more.   
  
He folds his arms behind his head and stares at the ceiling, tracing the shape of a rust stain. It kind of looks like Soundwave’s head.   
  
He wonders if the Decepticons are looking for him. Has anyone noticed he’s been out of contact for over a week? That the deal with the Pentas obviously went south? Or has Turmoil been hiding it? Probably tagged it as a failure on Deadlock’s end, blocking anyone from caring about it.   
  
Megatron might. If anyone reminds him Deadlock’s assignment to Turmoil was only supposed to be temporary.   
  
Starscream’s probably doing his best to make sure Megatron forgets.   
  
Deadlock vents and scrapes a hand down his face. He’s in no hurry to get back to the Decepticon fold. Except, perhaps, to prove to Turmoil he’s very much alive and not to celebrate too soon. But he’s not in a hurry to return to war either. He’s good at what he does, killing and the like, but he doesn’t enjoy it.   
  
He never has.   
  
It’s necessary. At least, he tells himself this often enough if only to stave off the night purges. The violence and the killing, both are necessary, because they never would have found a path to freedom without it.   
  
He hates having to confront those choices. He hates every little seed of doubt Ratchet plants in his mind, because being around the medic thrusts him back into the past, back to the leaker he’d been. It reminds him he’d had a choice, and he made his choice, but it could have been a different choice.   
  
Deadlock hates it.   
  
If he could get Ratchet out of here faster, back to the Autobots, somewhere away from Deadlock where he’s not a reminder and a question and a moral quandary – Deadlock would do it.   
  
In a sparkbeat.   
  
He doesn’t need the temptation. He doesn’t need Drift. Drift will die out here. He’s weak, and he’s considerate, and he’s not built to survive. Drift is a burden Deadlock will bury until the end of the war, if it ever comes.   
  
Drift, if Deadlock’s lucky, will never see the sun again.   
  
But Ratchet rips away Deadlock’s luck. The sight of him is a memory of gentle hands and encouraging words, perhaps not truly sparkfelt but there all the same. Ratchet gives Drift strength, and makes it harder for Deadlock to snarl and shoot him down.   
  
Ratchet makes Drift  _want_ , and that just can’t stand.   
  
Deadlock’s denta grit so hard he tastes sparks. He swears the silence gives room to sound, to the screaming in the back of his head. It gives Drift a voice he doesn’t deserve.   
  
Deadlock can’t take it anymore. He heaves himself out of the berth and strides out of the room, feeling both antsy and ready to rumble. The edginess lingers, but the rattle-clank of his own movement, and the hissing-rattle of the crashed ship slowly going through its death-throes, helps chase away Drift’s whisper.   
  
Deadlock’s not two steps out of the recharge room when Ratchet calls out to him, “I was thinking we need to go for a walk.”   
  
Deadlock blinks and nearly misses a step at the almost congenial tone. He follows Ratchet’s voice to the table, where he’s got a thin piece of plastic spread out and is scribbling on it with a marker.   
  
“A walk?” Deadlock repeats.   
  
Ratchet marks something on the plastic, his expression intent and focused. “We left a trail of destruction behind us. If we follow the track, we might be able to find something we lost.”   
  
For the life of him, Deadlock doesn’t know why that hasn’t occurred to him before.   
  
He moves closer to the table, peering down at Ratchet’s work. As near as he can tell, it’s a crudely drawn map, with the crash site marked in blue and an approximation of their skid marked in long lines of black. Ratchet’s sketched out the landscape – the rise and fall of the craggy rocks around them. Possible points of wreckage impact are marked in green.   
  
“Are you opposed or have you done this already, and I’m just wasting my time?”   
  
Deadlock shakes his head. “Neither. I’m just annoyed I hadn’t thought of it before.”   
  
“Yeah, well, that makes two of us.” Ratchet grins, and there’s nothing but amusement in it. “The good thing is, we can’t possibly get lost. The bad thing is--”  
  
“--we don’t know what’s out there,” Deadlock finishes for him. “But to be fair, we’ve been here for over a week, and nothing’s come near to investigate yet. We’re probably safe.”   
  
Ratchet snorts. “Talk about a relative term.” He straightens, arms pulling over his head in a stretch, hydraulics and cables creaking.   
  
Deadlock absolutely isn’t looking or anything. He directs his gaze at the hand-drawn map instead. “We’ll need to exchange actual comm codes if you want to communicate.” Narrow band comms won’t cut it for a long-distance excursion.   
  
“Yeah, I’d thought about it.” A datachip appears in front of him, blocking off a portion of the map. “Here’s mine.”  
  
Deadlock accepts it and slots it into place with a tiny click. “What? You don’t trust me to cable up? I’m hurt, Ratchet. Truly.”   
  
Ratchet rolls his optics. “Sure you are.” He holds out a hand, fingers wriggling. “Well?”   
  
Fishing out a comm chip, Deadlock hands it over and watches Ratchet install it. He waits a moment and then taps on the comm line, just to see if Ratchet can respond. He gets his answer when the medic huffs.   
  
“I can hear you,” Ratchet grumps. It shouldn’t be so endearing, but it kind of is. Ratchet’s gruff is a frag of a lot nicer than Hook’s grump. That’s for damn sure.   
  
“Just checking.” Deadlock grins. “You want to go now, or do you need a nap first?”  
  
Ratchet scowls. “Shut up.” He focuses on the map for a second longer, probably taking a capture of it, and then moves to the door. “Come on. Help me open this so we can go.”   
  
“Sir, yes, sir.” Deadlock fires off a jaunty salute.   
  
He doesn’t know what it says about him that he’s amused by Ratchet’s optic roll.   
  
They each grab one side of the door, fingers slotting into grooves where they’ve done this time and time again, and pull. With a grating, grinding screech, the bay doors slide open with enough space for them to squeeze out one at a time.   
  
Deadlock takes a moment to orient himself. Illumination is sketchy at best, with the nearest light-providing sun lightyears away, and various floating asteroids interrupting the path between its rays and the surface of the asteroid. There’s enough refracted light to provide some visibility, but thank Primus for peripheral and regional sensors. Otherwise they’d be walking, or apparently driving as Ratchet’s just transformed, blind.   
  
The terrain is just solid enough Deadlock’s wheels don’t spin uselessly when he, too, transforms. He takes up the rear, following the track of their crash back the way they came. He’s got his sensors trained outward, hoping to ping back a material that doesn’t match the local stone.   
  
The silence is oppressive. Deadlock doesn’t really think of the Decepticon mobile command base as home, but it’s the closest thing he has to one, and the Nemesis is always noisy. There’s no graveyard shift. It’s always fully staffed and ready to respond to an Autobot incursion or assault at a moment’s notice.   
  
It’s like sleeping on the streets, and there’s no sweeter lullaby than the rattle and clank of a thousand mechs in motion, the industries chugging and churning out their products, the riotous murmur of a thousand voices arguing and talking and loving and losing. The hiss and squeak of pipes filling the air, the stench of the perfumed and the unwashed, and the rusting and the brand new.   
  
His comm crackles to life.   
  
“You want to tell me?”   
  
Deadlock would have blinked, if he were in root mode. “Don’t remember you askin’ a question.”   
  
“Why the Decepticons?” Ratchet asks, as though they’ve been in the middle of a conversation that’s been interrupted.   
  
He stares hard at Ratchet’s taillights. Ratchet’s tone is too casual to be believed. “Pretty sure we’ve already discussed that particular question. It’s not my fault you don’t find my answers acceptable.”   
  
“I meant that you had so much potential. I hate that instead it’s turned into this.”   
  
Deadlock scoffs into the line. “You don’t know anything about me. How would you know what potential I had?” He revs his engine, in lieu of scowling at the mech. “Just because you disapprove of my choices, doesn’t mean they’re the wrong ones.”   
  
“Then tell me.”   
  
“What?”   
  
“You said I don’t know anything about you. Enlighten me then.”   
  
Deadlock would squint, if he could. “Why? What’s the point? You’re not going to get me to defect, and I don’t think you honestly care.”   
  
For a moment, there’s silence. Across the comm and in the world around them. Deadlock feels the crunch of the rock and grit beneath his tires, but he can’t hear it. They’ve passed small bits of the ship, bolts and tiny petals of the hull, but nothing useful, nothing worth stopping to scoop up.   
  
“There was a time Megatron and Orion Pax held the same goals,” Ratchet finally says, his words crackling as though thick with static. “Autobots and Decepticons could have fought as one, rather than against each other. Somehow, somewhere, our paths diverged.”   
  
So it is to be a political debate then?   
  
Well. At least it’ll fill the silence.   
  
“There’s a fundamental difference in our lives,” Deadlock says, drawing heavily on ‘Toward Peace’ because it has become the framework of his understanding. “Orion Pax was too content to let people suffer and die while he took the long path of diplomacy, attempting to convince mechs who didn’t want to listen. I didn’t want to die. And there were many like me, who didn’t want to be the collateral damage on that road.”   
  
“And yet the killing continues.”   
  
“You can’t expect someone who’s finally found freedom, to give it up and bow to the rules again.” Deadlock sends a dark chuckle through the comm. “The Tyrant is dead! Here are your new leaders, same flavor as the old, but don’t worry, they’re better. We promise. Don’t forget your rulebook on the way out.”   
  
“So it’s anarchy you want then.”   
  
“If that’s what you want to call it,” Deadlock bites out, anger curling low and heavy around his spark. “I prefer to think of it as living without the weight of unjust laws dragging you into the pit.”   
  
“Who decides the law then?”   
  
“What?”   
  
Ratchet’s voice comes through, insufferably patient. “You don’t want the absence of law, you simply want the existing law to be fair. Therefore, who gets to decide what’s just and unjust?”   
  
Deadlock’s engine revs again. There’s a hot-cold sensation twisting and churning in his gut. He wants to scream as much as he wants to hit something. Ratchet’s baiting him, he’s sure of it.   
  
It’s not going to fragging work.   
  
He slams on the brakes and launches out of alt-mode, feet skidding across the ground in the middle of the crash-track, bringing him to a halt. Dirt and rocks ping against his shins, but it’s nothing compared to the dust choking his air and now his vents.   
  
Ahead of him, Ratchet’s brake lights flare red, and then Ratchet transforms as well, the distance between them the length of a mech’s stride or two, but it might as well be a chasm.   
  
“The will of the people,” Deadlock says as Ratchet turns to face him. Toward Peace serves him well, in this moment. “Not the command of one. A mech should choose his own fate. Let it be dictated by his choices, not the circumstances which birthed him. It’s not that complicated.”   
  
“Choices,” Ratchet echoes, and his optics go dark. “You speak of choices, and yet when given the opportunity, you ran toward one of violence and death. You chose to spill the energon of your fellow mechs, some of whom fought against the very thing you hated.”   
  
Deadlock sneers, lips pulled back over his denta. “I chose to fight. I chose not to let the terms of my life be dictated by those who only saw my spark as a commodity to be bought, sold, traded, and discarded.”   
  
“Because Megatron told you so.”   
  
Deadlock’s fans rattle through his vents. He’s relieved Ratchet can’t hear the anxiety in him, though perhaps the medic can feel it. He’s never been very good at controlling his field when rattled. It’s never much mattered. Anger and threat are very effective tools to survive among the Decepticons.   
  
“I’ve been told a lot of things.” Deadlock forces his hands out of fists. “You told me I was special and sent me back out into the streets. Megatron picked my face out of a crowd and made me believe I was special.” And Gasket had told him he was a good mech, with a good spark.   
  
All of those things are true.   
  
And all of those things are lies.   
  
“All that tells me is that you had an opportunity to choose a different path, and you didn’t,” Ratchet replies, his tone flat through the comm, thick with disapproval, as though he’s Deadlock’s caretaker or overseer, someone who has a right to judge Deadlock on the choices he’s made to survive.   
  
No.   
  
Frag that.   
  
Frag Ratchet and his sense of superiority and his utter blindness to the hands Fate dealt.   
  
“You were forged a medic!” Deadlock snarls into the comm, his lips peeled back over his denta in a snarl. “You never had to guess your purpose. You had a job, a function, you had a life.”   
  
His vents go ragged. He wants to scream for all the good it will do him. He takes a step toward Ratchet, not threatening, but desperate to get the emotion out because it doesn’t quite carry in a comm as he wishes it could.   
  
Ratchet, to his credit, stands his ground.   
  
Deadlock’s frame goes hot. There’s no atmosphere to drag in, to cool his internals, and he wishes the lack of it were enough to chill him. “I was sparked, and then I was tossed into the gutter when there was no place for me. I was hated before I’d ever done anything. I never had a chance. So you don’t get to tell me what I should have done.”   
  
He glares, jaw clenched, denta gnashing and grinding together. His spark is a small, taut ball of emotion in his chamber. His knees rattle. He wants to transform and rev away, but they’re trapped on this asteroid together, and there’s nowhere for him to go.   
  
He’s stuck with the ghost of his past who’s  _disappointed_  in him, and Drift rails at the injustice of it all.   
  
Silence. Across the comm and whipping around him. Deadlock wants to strike, the urge boils inside him, and he doesn’t know what holds him back. His vents heave. He glares.   
  
Ratchet stares back at him, expression oddly closed off, no trace of anger in his face.   
  
“You’re right,” he says, across the comm, his voice a whisper-soft murmur.   
  
Deadlock cycles his optics. He rears back, feet sinking into loose strata. “What?”   
  
Ratchet’s shoulders drift down. “You’re right. It’s not my place to judge your choices. Primus knows, if I’d been less fortunate, perhaps I might have made the same.” He tilts his head, looks past Deadlock to something in the vague distance. “I was lucky. I am lucky. Your methods abhor me, but… I understand them.”   
  
Deadlock’s lips curl back in a snarl. “I don’t need your permission or approval. I don’t need your acceptance or your understanding.”   
  
Ratchet lifts his hands, palm down, placating. “That’s not what I meant.” His jaw works, his gaze shifting back to meet Deadlock’s. “You don’t have to explain yourself, and I’m not going to judge you. I’m done with that.”   
  
“Agree to disagree, is it?” Deadlock grins and there’s nothing pleasant about it. “How gracious of you.”   
  
Ratchet drags a hand down his face. His sigh echoes through the comm. “I don’t want to argue with you, Deadlock. I don’t want to turn this into a fight. I just want to find something useful so we can get out of here.”   
  
“And get as far away from the evil, murderous Decepticon as possible, no doubt.” He stalks past Ratchet, bumping shoulders with the medic. “Let’s go.”   
  
Ratchet’s hand grabs his shoulder before he’s out of range, and it takes everything of Drift still within him not to shrug off the grab. Deadlock pauses, half-turns, gives Ratchet a side-eye.   
  
“Right now, we’re neither,” he says, tone solemn, free hand briefly covering his badge. “We’re two stranded mechs who just want to get back home.”   
  
Deadlock dips out from under the touch, as polite a motion as he can make it. “Sure we are,” he says. “We’re even allies.” He grins, showing a lot of denta. “And maybe we’ll get lucky and find a piece of our busted ship.”   
  
He punctuates his words by transforming and starting back down the crash strip, not too fast Ratchet can’t catch up, but fast enough Ratchet isn’t going to stand around waiting. Sure enough, he sees Ratchet transform in his rearview mirror.   
  
Fortunately, Ratchet is silent. It’s enough that Deadlock can ventilate, can slowly unknot his cables, and work out the tension twisting his lines.   
  
He buries the anger back down, using it as fuel to lock Drift back in his cage, and gets himself back on solid ground again.   
  
Ten minutes later, they strike jackpot.   
  
Ratchet’s the one who spies it, he of the superior sensors. He pings Deadlock and transforms, pointing off to the right. They’ve long since lost the crash track, as their skid had not been that long, but it will be easy enough to follow their tire treads back.   
  
Deadlock catches the glint of something metallic in the distance. It’s a large something, but he can’t identify it. He starts trudging toward it, Ratchet ahead of him, an eagerness in Ratchet’s quick pace.   
  
Maybe Ratchet’s as ready to put some distance between himself and Deadlock as Deadlock is.   
  
Deadlock can hardly believe his optics or their luck. Ratchet gets there first and heaves the metal object out of the ground. It’s big, heavy, and it’s a relatively intact communications array. Granted, the end of it is ragged from where it’d been torn off the ship, and some of the spokes are twisted or missing.   
  
But it’s mostly present.   
  
Deadlock’s jaw drops.   
  
“What are the odds?” Ratchet says as he turns the thing around and around in his hands.   
  
“Is it fixable?” Deadlock asks.   
  
“We’ll see.” Ratchet grins, and there’s something genuine about it. Especially when he looks up with bright optics, and the weight of the war briefly vanishes from his shoulders. “But I think we’ve got a good chance. Here. I’ll carry it.”   
  
He hands it over, and Deadlock grunts as the heavy array tumbles into his hands. He’s not a medic, and he’s much smaller than Ratchet, so it’s all he can do not to drop it. Fortunately, Ratchet’s not watching as he’s too busy transforming and popping open his rear doors, revealing the patient transport area.   
  
It’s small, barely large enough for a mech Deadlock’s size, and the edges of it are crammed with medical equipment. And for a moment, Deadlock’s stunned by the trust Ratchet’s given him, seemingly without thought.   
  
He’s vulnerable like this. Incredibly so. Deadlock, with a well-placed shot, could find Ratchet’s spark chamber and kill him in an instant. He could crawl inside and do significant damage before Ratchet could manage to expel him. He could do any number of horrible things.   
  
Ratchet hadn’t even hesitated.   
  
“Well? Get on with it,” Ratchet prompts, giving an impatient wiggle that has no business being attractive.   
  
Deadlock grunts and heaves the array into Ratchet’s transport area, sliding it into the narrow space and up against the bunk. He casts around for some kind of strap to keep it in place, but there’s nothing. He shrugs and backs away, giving Ratchet space to close his doors. He guesses that’s good enough.   
  
“Back to home base?” Deadlock suggests as he turns in a circle, glancing around to see if anything else had landed here with the communications array. There’s some soot and broken, smaller pieces and a handful of loose nuts and bolts, but nothing useful. They’ve plenty of the latter in the repair kit back at the ship.   
  
“Can’t imagine there’s anything more useful than this out here,” Ratchet replies, and his tone sounds almost jaunty.   
  
Considering the tension from earlier, it’s a bit jarring.   
  
“Sounds good,” Deadlock says.   
  
Ratchet’s rear end does another little bobbing wobble before he rumbles toward their tire treads. Deadlock transforms and follows, a small bubble of excitement building in his spark.   
  


~


	7. Chapter 7

The broken communications array takes point of pride in the middle of the floor in front of the rear bay doors because there’s no place else to put it. They’d tried resting it on the work table, but it had crackled under the weight, and threatened to snap in half.   
  
Ratchet is far too old to be sitting on the floor, crouching over a broken piece of comm equipment. But it’s their only chance to get out of here.   
  
He has no idea what he’s doing. But he has to try.   
  
It takes fifteen minutes of Deadlock hovering before Ratchet has to snap at him to leave the tool box and take a hike. Or a nap. Or something other than looming over Ratchet with an impatient click of his armor.   
  
Deadlock huffs and drops down at the console. Ratchet doesn't know what he's working on over there, and frankly doesn't care, so long as it means he's not hovering.  
  
Eventually, he gets up and vanishes into the washrack. Ratchet only acknowledges this peripherally, trying this best to stay focused on the comms array.  
  
Primus, but he wishes Wheeljack were here. Wheeljack could have fixed this with a snap of his fingers. Could have built one out of scraps and duct tape and thin air.  
  
Ratchet's spark aches.  
  
He understands why Optimus sent him on this vacation, this sabbatical. He’d felt the tenuous threads of his sanity fraying to the point of snapping. He even understands why he had to go it alone.   
  
He still misses his friends, his allies, his fellow soldiers. Wheeljack’s warm humor and Perceptor’s dry wit and Hoist’s steady calm and First Aid’s sharp glossa. He misses them terribly, with an ache in his chassis, and as much as he wishes he could run from the war forever, he doesn’t think he can leave them behind.   
  
Ratchet shakes his head, tries to focus on the comms array, not that he knows what he’s doing. He’s stripped away the broken parts and made a list of what he thinks needs replacing. Pieces he’s pretty sure he can slot in and out of place easily enough. If this works, someone will need to climb on top of the ship and re-mount it, but small steps.   
  
He’s got to get it functioning again first.   
  
Deadlock emerges from the washrack, still somewhat dripping. “Any progress?” he asks.   
  
Ratchet grinds his denta. Something about the Decepticon’s voice grates on his patience. “The moment there is, you’ll be the first to know,” he says, just as a bolt pings off and goes flying across the room, narrowly missing Deadlock’s head.   
  
Damn. The one time he doesn’t have decent aim.   
  
Deadlock holds up his hands and backs toward the recharge room. “Clearly.” He points a thumb over his shoulder. “I’ll just go recharge then.”   
  
“You do that,” Ratchet grunts.   
  
The door rattles shut behind Deadlock.   
  
Peace and quiet reign for as long as it takes for Ratchet to give up on finding the lost bolt. He mutters a curse subvocally and leans back on his heels, rubbing a palm down his face.  
  
At some point, he’s got to admit he has no idea what he’s doing.   
  
Ratchet hauls himself up and starts digging into the supply cabinet. Not that there’s much to dig through. The dented med kit takes pride of place on the top shelf. The second shelf holds spare fluids, coolant, hydraulic, lubricating oils, and the like. The third shelf contains their energon rations, medgrade, low grade, and a few solid energon bars for extended release. The bottom two shelves contain the sole entirety of their spare parts stock.   
  
Ratchet bends down and starts to dig. He pulls out a few coils of spare wire, a whole bin of loose nuts and bolts and screws and rivets, and a couple more parts he might find helpful. He’s pushing aside a heavy box of spare duct tape when his fingers brush against a smooth container.   
  
His orbital ridges lift when he draws it out and examines the label. High-quality engex. And relatively new for that matter.   
  
“Well, well, well,” Ratchet murmurs. “What are you doing here?” He swishes the contents around, the thick purplish liquid glugging inside the bottle. He recognizes the label even, and his mouth fills with lubricant a little.   
  
He hasn’t seen this label in decades.   
  
He tucks it into his subspace. As far as he’s concerned, it’s his now.   
  
Ratchet takes his haul of spare parts back to the comm, dropping the rattling box on the floor next to it. He briefly stops to poke at the command console, but all he manages to do is successfully identify the toggle that activates the communication array. He gives it a few testing flicks.   
  
Nothing. Not even an indication it’s trying to connect to something that isn’t there.   
  
Frag.   
  
They’re going to have to tear apart the console, too. It’s probably any one of those loose cables there, dangling like pieces of string from the underside.   
  
Ratchet trudges back to the comm array. He stands beside it, his shadow falling over it. Pieces scatter around it. Tools sit within reach, like he knows what he’s going to do with them.   
  
He has no idea what the frag he’s doing.   
  
The urge to punt the broken array out the rear hatch nearly overwhelms him. Ratchet has to cycle several ventilations, swallow down the rage, the helplessness. His hands form shaking fists. His vents come faster.   
  
He turns his back on the array.   
  
He’s losing his mind out here, that’s what it is. With only Deadlock for company, such a visceral reminder of a past failure and every one he’s made since then. With a Decepticon who’s spared his life too many times and even saved it. With a busted ship and dwindling supplies and zero chance of rescue.   
  
It’s madness. It’s all madness.   
  
Ratchet drops into the bench behind the table, burdened by bits and pieces of various equipment from around the shuttle. They don’t either of them know what they are doing, but they are apparently full of endless hope because they keep fragging trying like it’s going to make a difference.   
  
He pulls the engex out of subspace and plops it down on the table. The liquid is so thick, it doesn’t slosh. Ripples barely disturb the surface.   
  
He doesn’t have a cube and casts around for something suitable to use. Pickings are slim. He settles for the cap of an empty hydraulic fluid bottle. Someone hadn’t restocked the escape shuttles apparently, because this bottle is dry as an organic bone.   
  
Ratchet pops the cork and fills his substitute cube to the brim. The scent rises to his sensors, chasing away the dull and flat metallic odor permeating the cabin of the spacecraft. It’s sharp and piquant, and Ratchet’s tanks rumble.   
  
He can’t fix the damn comms array.   
  
Bottoms up.   
  
The first capful goes down easy. It’s smooth and silky over his glossa, the taste hot but the sensation icy-cool as it hits his sensors. It flows through his intake, settles like a happy glow in his tank.   
  
Primus, but Ratchet’s missed this. Indulgence is yet another of so many things the war’s ripped from him.   
  
He knows he should savor it. Perhaps conserve it since they will be trapped here indefinitely. Ratchet, however, doesn’t want to play it safe. He wants to forget. He wants to pretend he’s somewhere other than here.   
  
He wants a tiny semblance of normal.   
  
The second, third, and fourth capfuls slip into his tanks with ease, without a burn, without hesitation, without anything to make him want to slow. This engex is potent, brewed to perfection, and it’s another thing he misses from pre-war Cybertron.   
  
They’ve lost so many things.   
  
Like time. Ratchet stares into the fifth capful of engex, and he’s not sure how long it’s been since he started. He’s not intoxicated, but if he continues on this pace, he will be. He’s not entirely sure that’s a bad thing at this point.   
  
A glint of some broken piece of equipment sits in his peripheral vision. It seems to be mocking him, reminding him he’s not making any forward motion. He has responsibilities. He’s supposed to be working, fixing, mending. But he’s a medic, not an engineer, and while theoretically, there shouldn’t be much different between the two…  
  
There is.   
  
Ratchet growls and flicks the object off the table. It clatters to the floor, and something else breaks off it, pinging against his foot. Bah. It doesn’t work anyway.   
  
He starts to lift the fifth capful when the door to the recharge room opens, revealing Deadlock in the doorway. His optics are narrow, and he’s peering into the cabin, one hand drifting down toward his holsters.   
  
He finds Ratchet immediately. Suspicion washes away in the wake of confusion. “What are you doing?” he asks.   
  
“Celebrating failure,” Ratchet announces, and salutes him with the bottle of engex, now one-third less than it had been when he found it.   
  
Deadlock’s orbital ridges draw down. “Is that my stash of Urayan Blue?”   
  
“Yep.” Ratchet pops the word and draws another swig from the capful, swishing the viscous fluid around his mouth before swallowing it. “Weird place to hide it.”   
  
Deadlock’s jaw twists. “I have a stash on every escape shuttle.” He stalks across the room, briefly glancing at the comms array, before pulling out a stool to sit. “Just in case.”   
  
“Right. Saving it for a special day?” Ratchet snorts. No such thing as a special day anymore. Now it’s just the grind, grind, grind of death and more death.   
  
“The end of the war,” Deadlock says.   
  
Ratchet tips back the last half of the fifth capful and tilts the bottle to pour himself another. “That’s never happening. Might as well enjoy it now.” The bottle hits the table with a thunk and wobbles in place.   
  
“By celebrating failure?” Deadlock’s frown starts to take on the edge of Optimus’ famous Disappointed Glower.   
  
“Yep.” Ratchet tosses back the shot, and his processor swims a little in the engex. “I can’t fix the comm. Pretty sure you can’t. We have no comm. We’re utterly fragged.”   
  
“Tell me something I didn’t know.” Deadlock kicks back in the chair, making himself comfortable, not that he was invited. He eyes Ratchet, and then snaps his fingers. “If you’re going to drink like that, at least share it.”   
  
Ratchet casts around for something else to use as a cup. He rummages through the bits and pieces, only for the bottle to be plucked from his hand. His head jerks up, a glare narrowing his optics, because apparently Deadlock can’t be bothered with a cup. Instead, he wraps his lips around the bottle and tips it back, drinking straight.   
  
He notices Ratchet watching and has the audacity to wink before he lowers the bottle and swipes his glossa over his lips. “Still my favorite,” he sighs.   
  
“Good for you.” Ratchet raps his knuckles on the table, debating whether or not he’s capable of leaning over the top and snatching the bottle back. “The engine’s shot, too, you know. There’s nothing either of us can do.”   
  
Deadlock peers into the bottle. “You act like that’s new information. Here’s a hint. It’s not.” He takes another drink, longer this time, intake bobbing as he swallows.   
  
Ratchet’s internals lurch. He wishes he could call it disgust.   
  
“Newsflash, Autobot.” Deadlock lowers the bottle and points at Ratchet. “We’ve been fragged from the start. It’s always been hopeless. Honestly, though, I thought your Autobot optimism would hold out longer.”   
  
“I failed that class.” Ratchet sneers and reaches for the bottle. Deadlock whisks it out from under his fingers with a shake of his head. “Luckily, it’s not a prerequisite.”   
  
He makes another grab, and Deadlock smirks. “I think you’ve had enough, medic. You’re wobbling.”   
  
“I am not,” Ratchet growls. He gnaws on the inside of his cheek, slamming his empty cap on the table, his tank warm from the engex.   
  
Deadlock chuckles. “Sure.” He takes another swig of the bottle and then grabs the cork, popping it back in place.   
  
“No one said you should cap that,” Ratchet says as he tilts forward, leaning against the edge of the table, and swaying a bit as he does so.   
  
He’s absolutely not inebriated. But he’s floaty in a way he hasn’t been in decades, and it’s much better than the dull ache of loss and hopelessness that’s been creeping into his spark. They’re trapped here, together, and the engex almost makes it sound like an okay idea.   
  
Deadlock blurs into Drift, and the heat in Ratchet’s tank filters lower, pooling molten in his groin.   
  
He is struck with a terrible, awful, wonderful idea.   
  
“I think you’ve had enough,” Deadlock says, through the tunnel of ideas bombarding Ratchet’s mind, chasing away all good sense. “At this rate, you’ll likely destroy the only shelter we have left.”   
  
“I’m not an angry drunk,” Ratchet grumbles, and points a shaky finger at Deadlock. “Point of fact, I’m not drunk at all.” He pushes to his feet, bracing his weight on the table with one hand, and catches himself when a sway threatens to send him tumbling to the floor.   
  
“Oh yes. You’re the picture of sobriety,” Deadlock drawls. He rolls his optics, sets the bottle on the table, and stands. “Come on. Time to recharge.”   
  
“Are you taking me to berth?” Ratchet asks, aiming for a leer. He doesn’t know if he manages. He feels like it droops to one side.   
  
Deadlock snorts. “I’m going to be a crutch. I don’t think it’s possible for me to carry you.” He circles around the table and snaps his fingers. “Come on.” He holds out a hand.   
  
Ratchet is not as intoxicated as Deadlock thinks he is. Especially when he activates the system flush all medics are capable of using to remove contaminants from one’s system, storing it in a separate tank for later disposal.   
  
He plays the part, however.   
  
He makes a couple steps around the table, toward Deadlock, and he stumbles. Deadlock is there to catch him with a little grunt and a flash of annoyance in his field. Ratchet grasps at his shoulders, thumbs inches away from the spikes framing his face.   
  
“Good catch,” Ratchet murmurs with Deadlock’s hands gripping his sides and their faces mere inches apart.   
  
Amber optics are narrowed slits of suspicion. Deadlock’s glossa sweeps over his lips, his ex-vents smelling like the engex they’ve been sharing.   
  
“What are you doing?” Deadlock asks, and there’s caution in his tone. Warning even. The irritation in his field slides into confusion.   
  
“I’m overcharged,” Ratchet says innocently. “And I’m off-balance.”   
  
“That’s not what you’re doing,” Deadlock retorts, tone flat.   
  
“Mmm. Good point.”   
  
Ratchet has a history of making bad decisions.   
  
Right here, on the edge of an asteroid field with no help in sight, he’s prepared to make another one. He might as well. He’s going to rust to death out here. There’s no point in delaying the inevitable, or pretending that he doesn’t want deep down to his struts.   
  
He leans in, waits for Deadlock to retreat, and when that doesn’t happen, the edges of Ratchet’s lips curl. He closes the distance, mouth sloppily pressing to Deadlock’s, because the flush isn’t happening quickly enough, and only half his imbalance is feigned. Lips crash together, denta knocking, and Ratchet makes a muffled noise before he re-aims and tries again.   
  
Mouths meeting, lips moving, glossa slipping out to briefly taste Deadlock’s, who relents, a shiver racing across his frame. His field opens to Ratchet, confusion flicking to understanding and a frisson of heat sparking through it.   
  
Ratchet wonders if Drift would have kissed like this, too. They’re the same mech, he knows. But Drift’s grip would not have been as strong as the one Deadlock has on his hips, squeezing tight enough to dent, were it not a medic he held.   
  
“You’re overcharged,” Deadlock says against his lips, and it’s good to know that as much as the Decepticons are angry killers, they still respect the laws of consent.   
  
Ratchet barks a laugh and leans back enough to see Deadlock’s expression. “Not as much as you think I am,” he says and one hand slides down Deadlock’s chest, his palm hiding the brand from view. “I know exactly what I’m doing.”   
  
“Do you?” Deadlock arches an orbital ridge and shifts his weight, sliding a knee between Ratchet’s thighs, nudging upward, a pressure against Ratchet’s groin. “Because I’m not going to suffer under a false accusation later.”   
  
“That won’t be an issue.” Besides, there’s no one to file a complaint with. Ratchet licks his lips. “I need an excuse. That’s it.”   
  
Deadlock barks a laugh. “Oh, so you’re going to blame it on the engex?” He rubs harder, and Ratchet’s array pings with heat, arousal throbbing through his lines. “Prime’s favorite medic can’t admit to wanting Megatron’s soldier, so he’s going to hide it behind the engex. How predictable.”   
  
“Is that you saying no?” Ratchet asks.   
  
Deadlock slants him a look. “You don’t trust me.”   
  
“Don’t need trust for this,” Ratchet says. “I’m not letting you at my spark or anything.”   
  
“Perish the thought.” Deadlock unravels himself from Ratchet, leaving Ratchet to wobble on his own feet, one hand braced against the table’s edge. “Just so we’re clear, you’re wanting to use me as an escape. Like the engex.”   
  
He tilts his head, and there’s accusation in his tone.   
  
Ratchet drags his fingers over the top of the table, a nonsense pattern. “We’ve got a lot of time to kill. Might as well get something good out of it.”   
  
Deadlock palms his face and grins behind his fingers, lips curled back and showing off his pointed denta. “Autobots are insane.” He spins around, walks away, and for a moment, Ratchet thinks it’s rejection.   
  
Except Deadlock goes to the door of the recharge room and pushes it open. He pauses, glances over his shoulder, expectant.   
  
“Well? Let’s get this bad decision started,” he says, and vanishes inside.   
  
It’s just like a Decepticon to turn the tables.   
  
Ratchet turns, snags the bottle of engex, and flicks off the stopper. He takes a long swig of it, more than aware Deadlock’s lips had been last wrapped around it, and clatters it back to the table. He fumbles with the cork, returning it, before following Deadlock.   
  
He doesn’t shut the door. What’s the point? They’re alone on this desolate rock, and Ratchet has no desire to be trapped in this tiny room as it is. The berth won’t fit two, not comfortably, but they aren’t here to recharge together.   
  
Deadlock perches on the edge of the berth, leaning back on his arms, knees spread, head cocked, expectant.   
  
“I was waiting for you to change your mind,” he says, optics glinting with heat. His lips curve into a smirk. “Guess you’re braver than I thought.”   
  
Brave?   
  
Ratchet sets his jaw. He crosses the floor in a few strides, and straddles Deadlock in a quick motion, knees digging into the berth, his groin flush against Deadlock’s belly, his valve throbbing hot and insistent between his legs. He puts his hands on Deadlock’s shoulder and pushes.   
  
He doesn’t know if Deadlock relents, or if he has the superior strength, but Deadlock’s hands slip out from behind him, and his back hits the berth. Ratchet follows him down, hands landing to either side of Deadlock’s head to brace himself, as warmth lands on his hips, sweeping up and down.   
  
“I’m not in here to play games,” Ratchet growls as he rolls his hips, grinding down on Deadlock’s panel, feeling the heat rising up beneath him. Arousal is a warm taste in Deadlock’s field, and Ratchet shivers at the sensation, meeting it with his own.   
  
“Didn’t know Decepticons were your taste, medic,” Deadlock replies with a challenging grin and a quirk of his orbital ridge.   
  
“Are you looking for a compliment?”   
  
Deadlock chuckles, dark and dirty and lust slithers down Ratchet’s backstrut. His fingers curve into the berthcovers. “Don’t need them. I know how pretty I am.” He winks, and his hands curve around to Ratchet’s aft.   
  
He rolls up, feet braced on the floor, a mimicry of what they intend to do.   
  
“Tell me again,” Deadlock says as he tilts his chin.   
  
Ratchet swallows thickly, glossa slicking his lips. “How pretty you are?”   
  
“No. That you want this.” Crimson optics narrow as the rumble of Deadlock’s engine vibrates the narrow berth. “I can taste the engex on your glossa. I’m many things, but I don’t take the unwilling.”   
  
Ratchet leans down and steals Deadlock’s mouth for another kiss, deeper and more intoxicating than before, far headier than the engex. Deadlock’s response is hungrier, his glossa slipping into Ratchet’s mouth, sweeping around, tasting him. His fingers tighten on Ratchet’s hips, and something hot and wet bumps up against the inside of his thigh.   
  
He hadn’t even heard the click of Deadlock’s panel.   
  
“Does that answer your question?” Ratchet demands as he rocks down, shivers at the sensation of a wet spike brushing over his armor, leaving streaks of pre-fluid behind.   
  
“It’s a start.”   
  
Deadlock leans up, snatches his lips again, denta leaving impressions behind. He pulls Ratchet down, arches up, rocking against Ratchet’s yet closed panel. His field crashes against Ratchet’s, a wave of hunger, and it’s not new. It’s deeper, heavier, like a hidden desire suddenly brought to life.   
  
Ratchet moans.   
  
Arousal throbs through Ratchet’s lines, hot and heavy. Lubricant pools behind his panel, his valve aching with need.   
  
Ratchet holds back. He’s not sure why, but there’s something about the tease of it that licks lightning through his lines. He digs into the berth with fingertips and knees, riding the rise and fall of Deadlock’s hips, the small space filling with heat from their rapid ex-vents.   
  
Deadlock’s head tips back with a growl. “Open up,” he demands, rutting against Ratchet’s panel insistently.   
  
Ratchet chuckles. “I don’t know. I think I like you like this.” His mouth wanders, finding one of those dangerous spurs on Deadlock’s head, giving them a lick.   
  
A shiver rushes through Deadlock’s field. Oh, he likes that.   
  
Ratchet bites down, enough to count as a nibble, not to dent, and Deadlock gasps, a sound that darkens into a growl. One hand slides free of Ratchet’s waist and shoves between their hips, fingers stroking a firm path over Ratchet’s panel. They’re clever, those fingers, as they prod against his seams and find the tiny, outer nodes, giving them a flick-flick-flick that makes Ratchet’s backstrut arch.   
  
His panel snaps aside.   
  
So much for restraint.   
  
Deadlock’s fingers plunge inside, two at once, hooking to prod at the ring of sensors behind his rim.   
  
Ratchet shudders, hips jerking down on Deadlock’s fingers, lubricant seeping out, sticky in Deadlock’s joints. A thumb rubs circles on his anterior node, and little sparks of need jab up and down Ratchet’s spinal strut.   
  
“What do you know,” Deadlock drawls with a smugness to his voice. “I think you like this even more.”   
  
Ratchet growls and rides the motions of Deadlock’s fingers, his valve cycling tight, trying to draw them tighter. “Give me your spike,” he demands as another curve of Deadlock’s fingers makes his knees wobble, and his valve ache.   
  
“As you wish, sir,” Deadlock purrs and Primus, it should not arouse Ratchet as much as it does, to hear the sir roll off Deadlock’s glossa.   
  
But it does.   
  
He groans, backstrut arching, fingers clenching in the berthcovers. He whines when Deadlock’s fingers withdraw, sticky with his own lubricant, and the whine deepens as Deadlock pops them into his mouth. His glossa sweeps around them, lascivious and hungry, as if he can’t bear to waste a single drop of Ratchet’s taste.   
  
Primus.   
  
Ratchet’s engine revs. He lowers his hips, blindly seeking the head of Deadlock’s spike. It brushes over his folds, teasing the rim of his valve, before he catches it and sinks down in one fell swoop. Pleasure licks through his valve like lightning, the thick spike stroking over every interior sensor before it nudges up against his ceiling node with a hot pressure.   
  
Deadlock’s optics roll back, his lips tightening around his fingers. He pulls them free with a loud pop and hisses a curse. He grips Ratchet’s hips, pulling down until he’s buried to the root.   
  
There’s a thickness at the base of his spike. A palpable knob of thickness that grinds against Ratchet’s valve rim and teases the small sensors located in a ring around it.   
  
Ratchet shudders, grinds down, hips moving in circles and rocking back and forth, keeping Deadlock worked deep. His ceiling node throbs with heat, and his lower half tenses, tanks twisting with need.   
  
“Better?” Deadlock asks, sly.   
  
“Shut up,” Ratchet snarls. He keeps at the pace, slow and steady, dragging Deadlock over his nodes, making them sing.   
  
He could do this rough and tumble. He could make it hurt, make it quick. He could do all that to remind himself that this is Deadlock, a Decepticon, and Ratchet’s making a very bad decision.   
  
He can’t bring himself to do it, though.   
  
Instead, he savors. He builds the pleasure up to a slow crescendo, lets Deadlock’s spike taste his valve in increments, shifting his hips in all directions, until the walls of his valve spasm with hunger, his nodes sparking and feeding charge into Deadlock’s spike.   
  
His Decepticon’s head tosses back, lips peeled back over denta bared in a snarl. He’s panting through his denta, sharp whistles of his air, his hips jutting up in small thrusts. All he can manage with the weight of Ratchet keeping him down.   
  
“This isn’t… a slow dance,” he gasps out.   
  
“No, it’s a battlefield,” Ratchet agrees with a huffed laugh because his arms tremble, and his knees shake, and overload hovers in his periphery, daring him with completion. “And I’m taking the measure of my enemy.”   
  
“The measure. Hah.” Deadlock barks a laugh, his gaze rolling up to Ratchet, gleaming with hunger, triumphant with humor. “It seems we’re evenly matched. For now.”   
  
“We’ll see.” Ratchet’s head hangs. He glances between their bodies, watching his valve swallow Deadlock’s spike, leaving pearls of lubricant behind, slick and sloppy between them.   
  
He rises up, their connected units framed by the vees of their bodies, and sees for a moment, the thickening at the base of Deadlock’s spike. It’s a bulge, adding a broadness to the base Ratchet is unfamiliar with. It feels good against his rim, catching and tugging on the swollen folds, however.   
  
“What have you done to your spike?” Ratchet asks, amazed he’s able to hold enough coherency to do so.   
  
Deadlock chuckles, and it’s dark and deep, slithering down Ratchet’s spinal strut to tiptoe into his groin and take up residence with a volcanic pool of want. “That’s not something you meet at first introduction. Maybe later.”   
  
His feet hit the floor, he thrusts up, slamming deep and firm into Ratchet. Curiosities about Deadlock’s spike evaporate in the wake of a flush of heat through his lines. Ratchet’s arms wobble, dropping him down to his elbows. The change in angle makes him moan, his anterior nub catching on a rise in Deadlock’s armor and adding to the cacophonous pleasure of the persistent rub of Deadlock’s spike against his ceiling node.   
  
Deadlock hooks an elbow around the back of his neck, pulling him down, the kiss fierce and brutal, denta nipping at Ratchet’s lips. And then he buries his face against Ratchet’s neck, denta staking a claim, mouth pulling in a hard suck.   
  
Ratchet’s frame goes taut, spark quivering. Overload erupts in his system like a hail of chargestorm, and he slams down, valve tightening and rippling around Deadlock’s spike. The lingering traces of overcharge burn out of his system, and Ratchet groans as the pleasure nearly strips him raw, leaving him strutless on top of Deadlock.   
  
“My turn,” the Decepticon growls in his audial.   
  
He grabs Ratchet’s hips, draws his feet up onto the berth, and starts to thrust upward, not with the force Ratchet expected, but with long, deep pushes of his hips. He grinds deep, shuddering tangibly, spike throbbing within the lubricated mess of Ratchet’s valve. He licks and sucks at Ratchet’s intake, mouthing over the mark he’d made.   
  
Ratchet would help, if he were capable of doing anything more than slumping down on top of Deadlock, pleasure running in lingering throbs through his lines, his knees like gelatin, and his arms weak.   
  
Not that it matters. Because Deadlock growls against his throat, thrusting several more times in sharp succession before he pushes deep and spills, the hot splashes of his overload teasing Ratchet’s sensitive ceiling node. He pants as his hips make tiny jerks, spike spurting several times before it ceases.   
  
Deadlock sinks into the berth with a satisfied groan, releasing his trip on Ratchet’s neck. The berth is too small to do anything but rest his forehead on Deadlock’s shoulder, trying to get his sparkrate to a normal rhythm.   
  
“You’re heavy,” Deadlock says.   
  
“I’m a medic,” Ratchet replies.   
  
“I can’t ventilate.”   
  
“Liar.” Ratchet, however, cycles a ventilation and through extraordinary effort, manages to pull off Deadlock and climb fully onto the berth. He’s damp between his thighs, Deadlock seeping tepid and sticky from his valve.   
  
Right now, he doesn’t care. He feels wrung out and exhausted, the lingering traces of overload humming through his lines. The anger from earlier is gone. It’ll be back tomorrow, but for now, it’s a dull thud in the back of his processor, hidden behind a curtain of pleasure.   
  
The berth creaks and shifts. Deadlock flops down onto the narrow space beside him, fitting his back against Ratchet’s.   
  
“If you think I’m recharging on the floor, you’re mistaken,” he says as he climbs into Ratchet’s space as though he belongs there, tangling their limbs together, as if trying to meld their rather large frames into a small enough form to fit on the berth.   
  
Ratchet grunts. “Do what you want,” he says.   
  
He pretends it doesn’t feel nice to have another frame slotted next to his. That the hum and click and quiet thrum of another mech isn’t comforting or welcome. He shouldn’t want this.   
  
Deadlock is a Decepticon. This is, technically, fraternization with the enemy.   
  
Then again, at this rate, he’s never going to see home again.   
  
In the long run, it doesn’t really matter at all.   
  
It’s not really a comforting thought that chases Ratchet into recharge. But it’s not like there’s a lot of comfort to be had right now. So he’ll take what he can get.   
  


***

 


	8. Chapter 8

Ratchet falls into recharge easily. He’s snoring within moments.   
  
It is not so easy for Deadlock. He lays there, frame fitted to Ratchet’s, and his processor whirling a mile a minute. Drift is ecstatic. He keeps wanting to move closer, to lightly touch and memorize, to greedily inhale the increasingly familiar scent of Ratchet’s frame.   
  
Deadlock flicks that desire down.   
  
This is a terrible, awful, wonderful idea. He can’t imagine it’s going to end well at all. They hate each other, truth be told. Ratchet has expectations Deadlock is not going to fulfill, no matter how loudly Drift scratches at the wall.   
  
There is no universe where Deadlock will emerge from this unscathed.   
  
He should get out of this berth. He should disentangle himself from Ratchet and go elsewhere. He could recharge in the pilot’s chair, on the bench, on the floor. He could go into the washracks and rinse away the evidence of their coupling, so he doesn’t have a reminder of this evening.   
  
Ratchet is not going to wake feeling delighted about the encounter, Deadlock is sure of it. As sure as he is Ratchet was only pretending to be inebriated. Autobots, after all, need excuses to couple with Decepticons. Especially Autobots as high-ranked as this one.   
  
He can’t bring himself to move. Drift’s desires prove stronger. If anything, he curls closer, memorizing the heat of Ratchet’s frame, the scent of him.   
  
This is going to be poorly received in the morning. He might as well indulge while he can now.   
  
Deadlock and Drift both have a history of poor mistakes. He can add this one to the register.   
  
He slips into an uneasy recharge. It’s one rife with memories, purges, few of them light-sparked and memorable, far too many things he’d hoped to forget. He’s back in the underlevels of Slaughter City, defending against an Autobot Special Ops incursion, when he subconsciously feels the berth shift, and the sense of another energy field too close for comfort.   
  
He lashes out before he’s fully online, because one doesn’t live long with Megatron’s favor if he isn’t prepared to defend said favor with his spark. He hears a help, a shouted “Deadlock!” and his vibroblade pings across a sturdy chestplate.   
  
His optics stutter to life as he grapples and rolls, pinning the intruder beneath him, vibroblade to their throat, the other hand flat against a chestplate, over a sparkchamber. He looks down into blue optics, and for a moment he thinks “assassin!” until Drift shouts at him, and recognition pours down his spinal strut.   
  
Ratchet.   
  
Recent memories chase away the past. The reason for the tackiness on his groin and in his seams becomes obvious.   
  
Ratchet’s field pulses against his, and Deadlock is alarmed to find there isn’t a trace of field in it. He’s not sure how to define the emotion Ratchet’s field. It’s a cousin to resignation, except he’s sure Ratchet’s not suicidal.   
  
Maybe it’s because he thinks Deadlock just proved himself to be the murderous Decepticon of prior accusation.   
  
Well.   
  
Maybe he’s right.   
  
“Don’t you know better than to sneak around a sleeping Decepticon?” Deadlock asks with a tilt of his head. The tension leaks out of his frame. He doesn’t, however, withdraw the dagger. “That was a close one, doc. I coulda had your spark before you blinked.”   
  
Ratchet rolls his optics. “Excuse me if I’m not practiced in sleeping with the enemy.” He holds still, like he’s been threatened like this before.   
  
It’s probably not the first time he’s woken to a knife at his intake. Ratchet, as Chief Medical Officer and close friend to the Prime, has always been a prime candidate for assassination. Deadlock knows of at least three attempts, all of them failures. He doesn’t know whatever became of the assassins.   
  
Ricochet’s loss had been especially daunting.   
  
Deadlock chuckles. He has to admit, he appreciates Ratchet’s bravado. “That must make me a special case then.” He leans closer and curls his glossa over the curve of Ratchet’s jaw, intaking the scent of the medic – still hot-bright with last night’s pleasure. “Was that a one time deal, Autobot? Because you know we have a lot of time to burn.”   
  
Now is when Ratchet squirms, not enough to cause a nick, but he definitely shifts beneath Deadlock. “That depends on how much engex you have.”   
  
“As if it effected your decision last night.” Deadlock leans back and taps the end of the dagger against Ratchet’s intake. “I know you weren’t as inebriated as you looked. I know a little something about medics.”   
  
“Do you now?”   
  
Deadlock spins the dagger around his fingers and tucks it back away. “Enough to know that I’d be insulted, except you were clearly lying out your aft.”  
  
Ratchet’s optics slant away. “Let me up,” he says, gruff. “I need to wash.”   
  
Ah. Evasion. Such a typical Autobot reaction.   
  
Deadlock slides back, away from Ratchet, giving him more than enough room before the medic decides to start crying a false accusation.   
  
Ratchet scrambles off the berth, and Deadlock gives the mess between his thighs a pointed look. He swallows down the urge to offer to lick him clean – no need to let Ratchet know just how depraved he is. He’s already managed to evade the question about his spike. He doesn’t want to push his luck.   
  
Still…  
  
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.   
  
“You know, that washrack will fit two, if we squeeze,” Deadlock says as he tracks Ratchet’s rapid exit. “Just like the berth.”   
  
“No thanks,” Ratchet calls over his shoulder as he vanishes out the door, escaping like the little Autobot coward he is.   
  
Deadlock rolls his optics and stares at the dirty berth. They don’t really have much options for cleaning it. Seems like they’ll just have to recharge in a berth that smells of both of them.   
  
Fantastic.   
  
He leaves the room, the sound of the solvent spattering in the washrack dulled by the thin door separating it from the main cabin. The broken comms array is still on the floor. The half-empty bottle of engex remains on the table.   
  
Deadlock snatches it up and looks for a new hiding place. He’d rather they not drink it all at once. Or give Ratchet an excuse. If he wants to frag, he needs to come right out and say it, rather than pretend he needs the engex to give him courage.   
  
He stashes the engex in the storage panel under the bench in the workspace. He doubts Ratchet even knows that cupboard is there which makes it the perfect spot. He’s easing out from behind the table when the door to the washrack opens and Ratchet steps out, his expression far too grumpy for someone who’d been involved in fantastic interfacing last night.   
  
“Did you save me any solvent?” Deadlock asks.   
  
Ratchet’s orbital ridges draw down. “It’s all the same solvent.”   
  
“Yes, but it still takes time to run through the recycler.” Deadlock grins and cocks a hip against the edge of the table. “So. We going to talk about last night or are you going to pretend it didn’t happen. Blame it on the… fog of engex?” He arches an orbital ridge.   
  
Ratchet sighs and leans against the wall, keeping as much distance between them as possible. “What is there to talk about? We fragged. I’m sure we’ll do it again. Aren’t there more important things?”   
  
“I’m amused you think it’s a given we’re going to end up in the berth again,” Deadlock drawls, though he’s not sure amusement is the emotion rushing through his spark.   
  
Ratchet rolls his shoulders. “What else is there to do?” His gaze is distant, focused elsewhere, like he can’t bear to look at Deadlock.   
  
“Ah, well that’s a relief,” Deadlock says with an exaggerated hiss of his vents. “I’m your only choice so it’s a guarantee we’re going to frag again. And here I was thinking you actually liked me or something. My mistake.”   
  
He pushes off the edge of the table and drops his hands to hips, bouncing on the heels of his feet. “Well, that console’s not going to fix itself. Might as well keep poking at it and see if there’s anyway to get out of here faster.”   
  
Peripherally, he catches Ratchet’s scowl. “Why are you twisting my words?”   
  
Deadlock cocks his head. “Am I?” He looks up at the ceiling. “Nowhere did you say, hey Deadlock, I had fun last time and I think you did too. Want to give it another try? Instead, you spoke of inevitability with about as much enthusiasm as a wet meshtowel.”   
  
He lowers his gaze and grins, baring his denta on purpose. “Thanks but no thanks, Autobot. I don’t do pity-frags, and I’m no one’s only choice.”   
  
“So what? You want a confession from me?” Ratchet’s scowl deepens, and his stance shifts, though if Deadlock had to put a finger on it, he’d say with guilt.   
  
Good. That means he’s scored.   
  
Deadlock draws in a deep vent. “Ratchet, in all honesty, I don’t want fragging anything from you,” he says with a blunt honesty that has done him zero favors with the Decepticons. “You’re the one who sees me as some failure on your part. You’re the one who thinks I need to be saved. And you’re the one who keeps hoping to nag me into changing, so I can better fit what you want from me.”   
  
Ratchet reels back, his aft hitting the wall behind him. “That’s not-- I’m not--” He splutters, and his field flares, a sharp, incisive thing with regret and self-flagellation and shame and ugh, it’s nauseating.   
  
Deadlock pinches the bridge of his nose and waves off the gibberish. “I don’t want an apology. I don’t want you to be defensive. I just want you to stop pretending and focus on the damn broken ship, okay?”   
  
“We can’t fix the ship,” Ratchet grinds out, and his tone is soft, meek almost.   
  
“And you can’t fix me.” Deadlock spreads his hands, ignores the wailing of Drift deep down inside. “We’re at an impasse.”   
  
Silence.   
  
Ratchet’s field is wild, uncontrolled, full of so much emotion it makes Deadlock nauseous. He wants to back out of the reach of it, but he can’t, because there’s nowhere to go in this small ship. All he can do is pull into himself and stand his ground.   
  
Ratchet cycles a ventilation, ragged though it is, his optics bright, and not with any positive emotion. “We’re stuck together,” he says, and pauses to cycle his vocalizer, probably to clear the static from it. “Probably forever at this point. We should get along.”   
  
Deadlock stares at him.   
  
Ratchet scowls. “What?”   
  
“Oh, I’m just waiting,” Deadlock says with a shrug. He pushes past Ratchet and drops into the pilot’s chair, glaring hard at the broken console.   
  
“For?”   
  
“An apology.”   
  
Ratchet huffs a vent behind him. “Excuse me?”   
  
Deadlock props a foot against the console and leans back, staring through the windscreen at the silt painting the thick transteel. “If there’s anyone here who’s being unfriendly, it’s you.”   
  
The chair beside him creaks as Ratchet lowers down into it, face set in a scowl. “So I’m supposed to apologize for being wary of a Decepticon?”   
  
Deadlock sighs and scrubs a hand down his face, feeling an ache growing behind his optics. “You do realize that I’m not just a Decepticon? Like, it’s not my only definition? I exist outside of this brand.”   
  
“I’m aware of that,” Ratchet grouches and sits back, folding his hands over his chestplate.   
  
“Yeah. Not sure you are.” Deadlock raps his fingers on his thigh. “You see me, this badge on my chest, and you make assumptions. You decide I’m awful and terrible because I’m something you hate.”   
  
Ratchet scowls, his expression darkening. “You’re awful because you’ve killed a lot of Autobots,” he says, his tone flat and his field equally so.   
  
Deadlock rolls his optics so hard it almost hurts. “Right. Yes. And no Autobot has ever killed a Decepticon. Do you even hear yourself when you start pontificating or do you just automatically tune out the hypocrisy?”   
  
Blue optics widen. Ratchet sucks in a startled ventilation, and he opens his mouth to retort, but Deadlock lifts a hand, cuts him off.   
  
“Don’t bother,” he says. “The truth is, the universe, the fragging war, it’s not black and white. It doesn’t fit into boxes of either or.” He pushes to his feet, a vibration in his armor he can’t seem to escape. “I’m not an Autobot because you all don’t understand shades of grey. The Decepticons aren’t perfect, but at least they don’t pretend to be.”   
  
He snaps past Ratchet, stalking between the two chairs. There’s nowhere to go in this tin can but the berth room that reeks of their interfacing the night before, and the washrack, which probably still reeks of Ratchet.   
  
Deadlock storms to the rear hatch, digging his fingers into the sides of the door to yank it open enough for him to escape.   
  
Ratchet, of course, gives chase. Because just like an Autobot, he can’t leave well enough alone. He has to pick and pick and pick until he’s gotten the answer he wants, rather than the only one he’s going to get.   
  
“If you’re trying to get me to believe the Decepticons are on the side of good, you’re failing,” Ratchet snarls, and his field pulses, heavy with anger and shame and too many other emotions to name. “You’re not poor, misunderstood victims who never had a chance!”   
  
Deadlock growls over his shoulder, the rear hatch grinding and scraping, not moving fast enough for his liking, atmosphere whistling out of the cabin and into the vacuum of the atmosphere, taking his words with it.   
  
He abruptly shifts to comm. “I don’t want you to believe anything,” Deadlock shouts, an unnecessary volume because it’s a comm, but it has the effect of making Ratchet wince, cringing back as though that’ll help him ease the volume. “I don’t want anything from you!”   
  
The door slams open abruptly, and Deadlock staggers from the suddenness of it. He kicks the crate out of the way and storms outside, the crunch of the stone and silt tangible through his feet.   
  
He waits, tense and angry, for Ratchet to appear behind him. The comm crackles with static, dead silence, as Deadlock waits for Ratchet’s rebuttal.   
  
Nothing.   
  
Deadlock snorts and trudges around the side of the ship, where he’s dug a furrow in a vain attempt to free the crashed shuttle. He kicks at the mound of rock and sand he’s made, smaller stones pinging against the side of the dented and much struck hull.   
  
Struck enough that there are holes, point of fact.   
  
Good.   
  
Deadlock leaps over the mound, jabs his fingers into the holes, and scales up the side of the ship. It rocks a little, but otherwise holds steady.   
  
The empty dock where the comms array should have been mocks him with the stub of the connecting port. Deadlock kicks it for good measure, then drops down to sit at the stern of the ship, feet dangling over, heels drumming the cracked transteel of the windshield.   
  
He wants to destroy something right now. He wants to scream and shout and rage. He can’t do any of those things.   
  
All he can do is perch on this broken ship, stare out at an endless landscape of desolation, or stare up at an obstacle course of floating asteroids, all of which are preventing his escape.   
  


~

 


	9. Chapter 9

Ratchet lets Deadlock go.   
  
Honestly, it’s the least he can do.   
  
The Decepticon’s words echo in his processor and shame crests all over again. Because he knows, deep down, Deadlock is right. Not about the Decepticons, no. Of course not. Ratchet will never stand up and say the Decepticons are taking the right path and have the best of intentions.   
  
But it’s not his place to judge Deadlock’s choices. It’s Deadlock’s right, his freedom, to decide. Ratchet has no business trying to change him, convince him otherwise. Has no right to be disappointed. None at all.   
  
After all, it’s not Deadlock’s fault Ratchet himself doesn’t know what he wants.   
  
He can’t keep having the same circular arguments. He can’t keep pushing when he has no right to push.   
  
Ratchet sighs and turns back into the ship’s cabin. He’ll let Deadlock have his space, perhaps try to convince the Decepticon to come back inside once a few hours have gone by. Long enough he’s calmed. Long enough he might be willing to talk and accept… an apology.   
  
Ratchet’s strong enough to admit when he’s wrong.   
  
Until then, well, the ship is a mess. The detritus of their continued attempts to repair the ship litters the floor and the small table. The berthroom could use a wipedown, and Ratchet intends to rummage around and see if he can’t find a set of spare covers to swap them out.   
  
This is going to be home for the indefinite future. He might as well make it relatively neat.   
  
So Ratchet works.   
  
He always functions better when he’s working anyway. He has less time to think because he focuses solely on the tasks at hand. He picks up the tools and spare parts, returning them to their respective boxes in the storage closet. He shoves the comms array to one side, out of the immediate path, metal scraping against the floor as he does so.   
  
He finds an empty bin and uses it to gather up all the random bits and pieces of broken wires, plates, parts, anything that might be salvageable or that he can’t bear to toss because it might be useful at some point. He successfully locates a spare set of cloths in the storage closet and changes out the berth. He debates for several long moments before giving the soiled ones a quick scrub in the wash rack, squeezing them out, and hanging them to dry.   
  
It might work. It might not. One can hope.   
  
By the time he’s done, a couple hours have passed, the interior of the shuttle is cleaner than any habsuite Ratchet has ever owned, and he’s found not one, but two more bottles of hidden engex in the shuttle, both of differing flavors than the first, and one with a label so faded, it was probably on the shuttle long before the Decepticons seized ownership of the ship.   
  
Deadlock still hasn’t returned.   
  
So Ratchet grabs one of the bottles of engex as a peace offering and ventures outside. He doubts Deadlock has taken off or gone very far. Where would he go?   
  
Ratchet circles around the ship, but it’s not until he spies Deadlock’s dangling feet that he realizes the Decepticon has taken perch atop the shuttle. There’s zero chance Ratchet can clamber up there. He’s not a nimble speedster.   
  
“What do you want?” the question comes through the comm with zero inflection and not an ounce of warmth.   
  
“I’ve come with a peace offering,” Ratchet replies, and holds up the bottle for Deadlock to see.   
  
Deadlock stares at him, expression flat.   
  
“And an apology,” Ratchet adds, grudging.   
  
“I’m listening.” Deadlock tilts his head.   
  
Ratchet cycles a steadying ventilation. “I have no right to judge you,” he says. “And it’s not my place to… recruit you either. Your choices are your own. We wear different badges, but we are in the same circumstance, and they don’t matter.” He draws heavily on Wheeljack’s charisma for this, wishing his best friend were here to make it easier. For a lot of things. “You’re Deadlock first, and a Decepticon second.”   
  
Deadlock lifts his chin. “And?”  
  
“And I am sorry,” Ratchet says through the comm, relieved it can’t translate the sound of his gritted denta.   
  
Deadlock’s lips curve in a smirk. “You should have led with that.” He hops down from the shuttle, landing down with a puff of dust around him. “For what it’s worth, in return, I won’t brag about the Autobots I’ve killed. Or reference them so flippantly.”   
  
“I appreciate that,” Ratchet replies. Relief loosens the clamp of his armor. “Are we good then?”   
  
“Good enough.” Deadlock plucks the bottle of engex from his hand and examines the label. “I don’t recognize this.”   
  
“I didn’t think you would. Think it’s been here since the shuttle was constructed.”   
  
Deadlock turns the bottle over and over in his hands, examining it from all angles. He squints at the bottom of it. “I wouldn’t be surprised. Turmoil seized my ship from an old shipping yard to give it to me.”   
  
“Would it offend you if I said that doesn’t surprise me?”   
  
Deadlock tucks the bottle under his arm and cocks an orbital ridge. “Why would it? Turmoil is an aft. There’s no love lost there.” His mouth sets in a grim line. “Loathe is probably a better term.”   
  
Ratchet folds his arms over his head. “Good to know.” He shifts and looks over Deadlock’s shoulder, squinting at the drifting asteroids around them. “You ready to come back inside, or would you rather stay out here and enjoy the view?”   
  
Deadlock slants him a look before he taps the end of the bottle. “I think it’s time to pop this open.” He strides past Ratchet without a second word, and Ratchet makes the assumption they’re returning to the shuttle interior.   
  
Minor crisis averted.   
  
He follows Deadlock back into the shuttle, and they work together to close the rear hatch, the grate of the sliding mechanism informing them that the more they move it, the less it’ll move in the future. Ratchet supposes that doesn’t matter. Eventually, the batteries will run out of charge, and they won’t have atmosphere to produce anyway.   
  
The door notches into place, and the atmospheric cyclers kick on with an audible whirr. Deadlock turns, dusting his hands, and blinks.   
  
“You cleaned,” he says.   
  
Ratchet plants his hands on his hips, unable to resist a grin of pride. “Yes.”   
  
Deadlock moves further inside, slowly, like a newly adopted turbofox kit inspecting its new home. “As apologies go, that’s very effective.” He peers into the berth room and gives Ratchet an approving look over his shoulder. “Even changed the covers. I’m impressed.” He pauses to grin. “Almost feels like a seduction.”   
  
Ratchet snorts, ignoring the twinge of heat coiling lazily in his lines. Emotional upheaval aside, his array remembers all too well the pleasure Deadlock had offered. They had shared a berth only just last night after all.   
  
Once Ratchet gets over himself, he admits, he wouldn’t mind doing so again. Right now, their badges don’t matter. They’re not at war. They’re just two very attractive mechs, stranded together, relying on one another.   
  
They can worry about the rest later.   
  
“Interpret it however you like,” Ratchet says, careful to keep his tone casual.   
  
“Thanks. I intend to.” Deadlock gives him a sidelong look before he continues on, dropping down into the pilot’s seat, which squeaks beneath him. He gestures to the other, finger crooked, and Ratchet takes that as an invitation.   
  
The lid pops on the engex as Ratchet gingerly lowers himself into the chair. Deadlock pops one foot up on the console and takes a hearty swig of the engex before offering it to Ratchet with a smack of his lips.   
  
“It’s good,” he says, and gives the bottle a wiggle. “Come now. We’re too intimate to bother with cups anymore.”   
  
Well.   
  
He’s got a point.   
  
Ratchet takes the engex and gives it a sniff, his optics filling with lubricant at the bitter odor, a bit like stale hydraulic fluid. It’s going to burn, he’s sure of it.   
  
Two seconds later, Ratchet’s intake seizes, and his tank rebels, and only sheer force of will keeps the first swallow down. Tankrot, he thinks, is the best term to describe this engex. It boils in his tank like volcanic fire, and sends a surge of overcharge through his lines.   
  
He hands it back, his glossa tingling. “That’ll put a kick in your engine,” he grits out. “Maybe we should pour it on the fuel cells.”   
  
Deadlock barks a laugh. “Too rough for your fancy system, I see.” He takes a hearty swig and winks. “Don’t worry. This leaker here will take care of it.”   
  
A throb of guilt squeezes Ratchet’s spark. “Don’t,” he says, his voice purposefully hushed. “Don’t denigrate yourself like that. It’s not what I think.”   
  
“Isn’t it?” Deadlock’s question cuts to the strut, for all that he’s grinning, and his head tilts, almost playful. “Isn’t that what you see when you look at me? One-part leaker, one-part Decepticon, one-hundred percent living proof of your failure?”   
  
Ratchet’s hand clenches into a fist on his lap. His gaze drops. “I deserved that.”   
  
“Yeah, you did.” Deadlock takes another swig and tips back in the chair, the spring of it squeaking as he pushes himself into a slow rock, testing the flexibility of the stabilizing column. “If it eases your conscience any, I was a leaker, and I probably still am, under the badge. I’m a Decepticon, too. I’m not anyone’s failure but my own, so you know, stop blaming yourself.”   
  
Ratchet works his intake. “Right,” he says, his mouth dry, and the lump growing larger in his intake. “I’ll try, but blaming myself. It’s kind of my defining personality trait.” He quirks an off-balanced smile, trying to inject some levity back into the conversation.   
  
Deadlock grins and offers the bottle of engex.   
  
Ratchet accepts, and accepts even more the way it numbs his glossa, sits thin and fiery in his tank, makes his head spin in a manner he can’t decide if he enjoys or hates. He hands it back.   
  
“Come on, Doc. I’m sure you have plenty of unappealing traits. Let’s not focus on the one,” Deadlock says with a laugh. He wraps his lips around the mouth of the bottle, intake bobbing as he takes several long gulps.   
  
“More unappealing than appealing, that’s true,” Ratchet grunts. He rests one foot on the console, nearly mimicking Deadlock’s pose. “You know. The comm’s shot. The engines are dead. Our batteries will die sooner rather than later.”   
  
Deadlock’s glossa flicks over his lips. Ratchet may or may not track the quick-wet motion. “You’re just full of that Autobot optimism today, aren’t you?”   
  
“Hey.” Ratchet points a vaguely wobbly finger at the Decepticon. “If I can’t stereotype by badge, neither can you.”   
  
“Fair enough.” Deadlock chuckles and swings the bottle toward Ratchet, half empty as it is. “I think I might have a solution to our problem.”   
  
Ratchet snatches up the bottle and takes a hefty swig, swallowing it as quickly as possible. His mouth very much feels like he can’t shake the oily, sticky taste. He gags, and swallows down the urge to purge.   
  
“Share,” he squeaks out, and ignores Deadlock’s amused look.   
  
“I’m thinking… emergency beacon. That sort of thing. We can’t set up a two-way communication but maybe we can send out a signal.” Deadlock talks and gestures with the bottle the whole time, his grin getting lazier, the gleam of his optics a softer hue. “Maybe we’ll get lucky.”   
  
“It’s worth a shot,” Ratchet says.   
  
“Sure is.” Deadlock’s glossa flashes whip-quick over his lips. He offers the bottle, and Ratchet declines, shaking his head.   
  
The world shakes a little, too.   
  
“Anymore and I’ll be worse off than I was last night,” Ratchet says.   
  
Deadlock’s head swivels toward him. He gives Ratchet a long look before he takes a swig of the engex and sits up, setting the bottle on the console with a hearty thunk.   
  
“It’s stronger,” Ratchet adds, not sure how to define the look on Deadlock’s face. There’s heat, certainly, and curiosity both.   
  
He’s staring at Ratchet, optics drifting up and down, and the sound of his engine giving the tiniest of surges is far too loud in the still quiet of the downed shuttle.   
  
“But you’re coherent,” Deadlock says as he stands, slowly, carefully, like a predator stalking prey. “Capable of making informed decisions?”   
  
Ratchet squints. “… Yes?” Anticipation coils in his tanks. He doesn’t know if he’s reading Deadlock’s field right or not. Presumption has already made a fool of him thrice.   
  
“Good.” Deadlock moves toward Ratchet, one hand bracing on the back of the chair, as he leans into Ratchet’s space and slants his mouth over Ratchet’s.   
  
Ratchet freezes, stunned but not opposed, as Deadlock’s lips fall over his, warm and wet, his ex-vents tasting of the tankrot engex. His glossa flicks out, teasing the seam of Ratchet’s lips, before Deadlock pulls back, smirking. His field lazily slides over Ratchet’s, drizzling charge in its wake.   
  
Ratchet licks his lips. “I take it you don’t hate me then,” he says, his voice thick with static until he reboots his vocalizer. He rubs his hands down his thighs, hunger coiling like smoke in the pit of his belly.  
  
Deadlock chuckles. “This would be what I call the ‘making up’ part of our non-relationship. Unless you’re not interested.”   
  
“I don’t understand you,” Ratchet sighs. His head spins a little, and he doesn’t know if it’s Deadlock’s proximity or the engex, or some heady mix of both.   
  
“That’s not an answer either.” Deadlock hums, his hand sliding across the back of the chair until his thumb brushes the side of Ratchet’s intake, sending a frisson of heat down his spinal strut.   
  
Ratchet’s engine revs. “No, I’m not protesting,” he grits out and grabs the back of Deadlock’s head, yanking him in for a kiss.   
  
Their denta clang. Deadlock laughs against his mouth, but eagerly responds, turning the kiss fierce and hungry within the space of a sparkbeat. He nips at Ratchet’s lips, making them tingle, and his free hand drops to Ratchet’s thigh, sliding up and up with a slow glide of dermal metal on metal.   
  
Ratchet pays too much attention to the track of that hand, and he makes a muffled sound of disappointment when it abandons his leg before reaching his groin.   
  
Deadlock ends the kiss with a dark chuckle, his field rolling over Ratchet’s with tangible arousal. “There are better places for this,” he says, and in the next vent, grabs Ratchet’s free hand with his own and yanks, trying to pull Ratchet from the chair.   
  
He succeeds, only because Ratchet isn’t suspecting it. He lurches up, stumbling against Deadlock, and they crash backward, impacting against the console. Something blats angrily at them, but Pit, the whole thing is broken, so what does it matter.   
  
It’s unfair that Deadlock is seemingly unbothered by the engex, because he swings Ratchet around and his aft hits the console with another irritated beep. His hands go firm on Ratchet’s hips, holding him in place, and he dips his head, mouth latching onto Ratchet’s throat.   
  
Ratchet groans, tips his head back, thighs obediently parting for the knee nudging between them. “Seems, ah, like you have something in mind.”   
  
“You had it your way last time,” Deadlock says against his throat, denta grazing Ratchet’s cables, strengthening the charge clawing up his back strut. “Now it’s my turn.”   
  
Ratchet’s hands grip the edge of the console as he’s trapped between it and the heat of Deadlock’s frame. Lust surges through his lines, his processor spinning with need. His groin throbs behind his array panels.   
  
“Fair enough,” he manages to gasp as Deadlock’s denta latch onto his cables and bite down, not enough to draw energon, but enough to bruise.   
  
Ratchet groans, his vents caught in his intake. His knees wobble.   
  
He feels Deadlock smirk in his throat, and then Deadlock abruptly drops. Ratchet’s grip on the console is all that keeps him upright, while Deadlock’s hold on his hips pin him in place. Wet heat laps across Ratchet’s panel, followed by a puff of damp warmth.   
  
Ratchet rolls his head down, and moans as he catches sight of Deadlock licking his panel again, grinning up at him with dark optics and bared denta.   
  
“Gonna open up for me?” he asks, pressing his lips to Ratchet’s panel, the vibrations of his voice surging through the metal. “Or are you going to make me work for it?”   
  
Ratchet’s fingers tighten on the edge of the console. He swears it creaks beneath his grip. He tries to think of something witty, but it’s lost to the rapid swipe of his panels sliding open, his array coming into view.   
  
Deadlock chuckles, and the erotic sound of it does something hot and electric to Ratchet’s lines. His knees threaten to wobble against the console.   
  
He blames it on the engex. It has absolutely nothing to do with how sexy Deadlock is, or how much Ratchet wants to feel those lips wrapped around his spike.   
  
“Eager, are we?” he asks as he ex-vents hot and wet over the tip of Ratchet’s spike, already pressurizing with embarrassing pace toward the temptation of Deadlock’s mouth.   
  
Ratchet rolls his hips, nudging the tip of his spike over Deadlock’s lips. “I only want what I’m being promised.”   
  
“Impatient, too.” Deadlock closes his lips around the tip of Ratchet’s spike, his glossa prodding at the transfluid slit.   
  
Ratchet’s head tips back, denta gritting, a wave of need sweeping through his frame. His spike fully pressurizes, firming against Deadlock’s tongue, pre-fluid beading up so swiftly he’s almost embarrassed. Or he would be, if it wasn’t for the engex swamping his processor, and the warm-wet-pressure of Deadlock’s mouth around his spike.   
  
“Primus,” Ratchet groans, gripping the console to keep from gripping Deadlock’s head and thrusting deep.   
  
Deadlock chuckles around his spike, sending vibrations through it, before he swallows Ratchet deeper, until the head of his spike bumps the back of Deadlock’s intake.   
  
Ratchet moans, hips rocking into the warmth of Deadlock’s mouth, his spike throbbing and his valve clenching hungrily on nothing. Lubricant wells up, building behind his panel, and he simultaneously wants to spill down Deadlock’s intake, and overload with a spike nudging his ceiling node.   
  
He pants, drawing in a desperate vent, the heat of Deadlock’s mouth a hungry embrace. Deadlock swallows around him, over and over, intake a rippling squeeze that drags out another pitiful squeak of pleasure. Ratchet’s knees wobble. He has to fight himself not to grip Deadlock’s head again.   
  
Deadlock moans. The slick sound of lubricant floats to Ratchet’s audials. He looks down, and the flame of need in his belly flares into an inferno.   
  
Deadlock’s got his own spike in hand, jerking himself off furiously, little drips of pre-fluid spattering down on the floor beneath him. His field reaches up, twining with Ratchet’s, sharing a buzzing surge of desire. It’s almost suffocating, the blazing heat of Deadlock’s need, and it coils in Ratchet’s belly and surges up to nestle in his spark.   
  
Ratchet breathes a curse and blindly paws at Deadlock’s head, wrapping his fingers around one of the protruding finials. “Get up here,” he snarls as another fierce suck makes his legs quiver, and he slumps back against the console. “Get up here and frag me now, damn it.”   
  
Deadlock chuckles around his spike, the vibrations sending a surge straight to Ratchet’s nodes. He looks up at Ratchet, grinning with a mouthful of spike, and pulls off slow, achingly slow, suckling as he does, like he’s trying to suck the very overload out of him.   
  
Ratchet growls through his denta, back curving, vents roaring, until Deadlock mouths only the tip, glossa prodding at his slit. The curve of his lips is a smirk, there’s challenge in his optics, and the tickle of his field drags through Ratchet’s with teasing fingers.   
  
“Deadlock!”   
  
The Decepticon lets him slip free with a slurp, and licks his lips. He rises, hands shifting to glide up Ratchet’s legs, leaving a smear of his own pre-fluid on Ratchet’s armor.   
  
“I have to admit, I enjoy the sound of you begging,” Deadlock says with a laugh. He leans in, licks the corner of Ratchet’s mouth.   
  
“I think that was more of a demand,” Ratchet growls. He lifts his legs around Deadlock’s waist, bearing his weight against the useless console behind him, tugging the Decepticon against him.   
  
Deadlock’s spike nestles over his valve, the head of it rubbing his rim, skating up to glance across his anterior node, and a shiver of near-overload zings down Ratchet’s spinal strut. He grits his denta, holds back, feels pre-fluid painting over his array.   
  
“Stop being a tease,” Ratchet adds as he knocks his heels against Deadlock’s thighs, pulling him even closer. “Show me that mod of yours this time.”   
  
Deadlock leans into him, hands bracketing Ratchet’s sides, bearing him backward onto the console, which creaks alarmingly beneath them. “Not yet.” His mouth travels lower, lips and denta finding Ratchet’s intake, nibbling on delicate cables. “I think you need to trust me a bit more for that.”   
  
“Stop being so damn mysterious – ah!” Anger splutters out into a moan as Deadlock thrusts into him, filling him in one push, the thick glide of spike over his sensitized nodes making Ratchet jolt.   
  
His thighs tighten around Deadlock’s waist. He topples back, elbows hitting switches on the console, making something beep annoyingly. Denta pinch down on his cables, sending pain and pleasure into a chaotic mix through his lines.   
  
Deadlock pushes him into him quickly, no more tease, just a need for release in the harsh motions, raking charge within Ratchet’s valve with every thrust. Ratchet gasps, lights dancing behind his optics, his processor spinning, the damp head of his spike grinding against Deadlock’s abdomen, leaving smears of his own pre-fluid behind.   
  
Overload snatches him in a sudden grip, and he thrashes, valve clamping down on Deadlock, rippling around his spike, surges of charge dancing over his armor and spilling down into the console below. Pleasure spurs his vents into the fastest spin, whirring, his thighs squeezing hard enough to cause Deadlock’s armor to groan from the pressure.   
  
Deadlock’s mouth seals over his, glossa shoving inside, and Ratchet tastes himself in the kiss, hot metal and his own transfluid, and it sends a surge of lust through his lines. He bucks up against Deadlock, valve still rippling and spilling charge, and feels the hot splash of transfluid inside him as Deadlock spills his overload.   
  
Ratchet groans, grabbing Deadlock’s head, holding him place to deepen the kiss. Licking and nipping, sucking on his glossa, his processor spinning. He rolls up, valve hungrily cycling, wanting more, feeling like it’s not enough.   
  
“Hold on,” Deadlock growls into his mouth, and Ratchet tightens his thighs as Deadlock grabs his hips and lifts.   
  
He staggers, hydraulics groaning, and Ratchet expects them to go toppling to the ground, but Deadlock manages one backward step, then two, each one jostling his still-pressurized spike in Ratchet’s valve.   
  
“You’re not going to make it to the berth room,” Ratchet says.   
  
“Good thing that’s not where I’m going then,” Deadlock retorts, and backs up one final step before he drops down, aiming for the chair behind him.   
  
They tumble into it, Ratchet’s feet moving aside at the last second so as not to be crushed. The chair groans in warning, but holds, and Ratchet moans as Deadlock is better seated inside of him, the head of his spike grinding hot and hard over his ceiling node.   
  
“And here I was all set to mock you for your stamina,” Ratchet pants, his feet finding purchase on the floor, enabling him to lift and drop himself on Deadlock’s spike, building the pleasure within him all over again.   
  
Deadlock scoffs, one hand snaking between their frames to curl around Ratchet’s spike and give him a fair squeeze. “If anyone’s to be doing any mocking, it’s me.”   
  
“How’s that?” Ratchet asks as his grips Deadlock’s shoulders, fingers digging in to Deadlock’s seams, teasing the cables beneath.   
  
“Why don’t you tell me?” Deadlock bites at Ratchet’s intake. “Are you going to have another attack of conscience in the morning?”   
  
Oh.   
  
Fully deserved that.   
  
Ratchet barks a laugh. “Only if you don’t keep up your end of the bargain tonight. You’d better frag me silly.”   
  
Denta latch onto his cable, biting down, just shy of drawing energon, and lightning streaks jagged up Ratchet’s backstrut. He arches against Deadlock, valve spooling tight, pleasure spiraling outward from the pressure of the denta.   
  
“I think I can do that,” Deadlock purrs against his intake before stealing his lips, smothering him in another one of those deep, claiming kisses.   
  
Ratchet groans and gives himself over to it.   
  
He’s on vacation, after all, and it doesn’t have to mean a thing.   
  


~

 


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Years Eve!

A clearer air settles between them.   
  
Deadlock isn’t sure if he can call it peace or trust or friendship, but it’s some satisfactory combination resulting in a truce. One where they spend equal amounts of time in the berth or on the floor or against the console or crammed in the tiny washracks, fragging each other senseless.   
  
Conversation slides to the background, if they bother with it at all. Perhaps that’s for the best.   
  
Deadlock’s certainly not complaining. He’s tired of fighting.   
  
It’s like they’ve become their own little world, where the war doesn’t exist, all the way out here in this lost and lonely space. All they have is each other, dwindling supplies, and a fruitless attempt to make an emergency beacon. They keep trying, of course they do, because they both want to go back home.   
  
But they are neither of them fools.   
  
There’s no hope for rescue, no hope for communication, no hope for anything but blind luck, and frankly, it seems the universe is out of offering it.   
  
They’ve stopped fighting. Or at least, they’ve quietly agreed to disagree. They don’t talk about the war, about their badges. They don’t discuss who’s wrong or right or what better choices could have been made, or how things could’ve been different.   
  
Sometimes, they don’t talk much at all. They sit, back to back, Deadlock poking and prodding at the emergency beacon he’s trying to build from a distant memory, while Ratchet attempts to get the ancient solar generator into functioning condition.   
  
“How do you know to do that anyway?” Ratchet asks as he picks and picks at a thick layer of rust choking the seams of the generator.   
  
Deadlock rolls his shoulders. “There’s an old archive in Rodion. In the underlevels. Think it burned down or was replaced or something, I dunno. But we used to squat there. No one bothered us much.” He strips a few wires and braids them together with twists of his fingers. “Anyway, they left a mess behind. Piles of datapads and crates of stuff. Probably considered it trash.” He grins, a fond memory forcing Drift to the surface. “We thought it was treasure.”   
  
“We?” Ratchet echoes.   
  
Deadlock stills, realizing the slip of the glossa. “My friends,” he says cautiously, as grief from Drift makes his hand shake before he can push it down. “My gang, if you ask the law.” He pauses and cycles a ventilation. “Closest thing to family probably. Doesn’t matter now. They’re all dead.”   
  
“I’m sorry,” Ratchet murmurs. He leans a bit harder against Deadlock’s back, his field reaching out in tentative offer of comfort.   
  
Drift would have accepted it immediately. Deadlock hesitates before grudgingly allowing the brush of warmth.   
  
“A lot of mechs are dead,” Deadlock says, gruff. “No point in crying about it.” He tucks the braided wire back into the small control panel and grabs a soldering iron. “Anyway, even leakers have downtime. So when we did, I’d plug into whatever datapads still functioned and just… read. We all did.”   
  
Ratchet grunts as he flicks away a huge piece of rust and at once, the seam is free, allowing him to swivel out one of the tripods. “Basic engineering was one of the datapads then?”   
  
“Yeah. It was all kinds of things, some more interesting than others.”   
  
Drift had loved the fanciful tales, the fictional sprawls of love and loss and redemption and heroes and villains. Simple stories, most meant for the newly sparked or the dim of processor.   
  
Deadlock doesn’t have time for such things.   
  
“What about you?” Deadlock asks, desperate to change the subject.   
  
“Me?”   
  
“Yeah.” Deadlock starts to attach the end of the wire, ever so carefully. “What did Medic Ratchet do in his free time?”   
  
Ratchet snorts, amusement trickling into his field. “I worked.”   
  
“Seriously?”   
  
“I worked full time for a prestigious medical center treating the elite for their various aches and pains,” Ratchet says with a long sigh. “I worked part time at the clinic in Rodion. I taught two classes once a week and when I wasn’t recharging, I was drunk.”  
  
His answer is perfunctory, almost practiced, resigned. Like his life had been that, and he’s not emotional about it one way or another, it’s an explanation he’s given again and again, and he doesn’t care anymore.   
  
Deadlock twists his jaw as the stench of solder floats through the air in little curls of smoke.   
  
“I’m not saying it for sympathy or anything,” Ratchet continues, his back pressing a little harder to Deadlock’s. “I liked being busy. I liked having work. I especially liked not having to think about the conjunx I didn’t have because he left.”   
  
“Because you worked too much?” Deadlock asks, trying to inject levity into a situation that probably has none.   
  
Ratchet snorts again, and he audibly scuffs the floor with a foot. “If you ask me, we both worked too much, but for entirely different reasons.” He cycles a ventilation. “We weren’t good for each other anyway. Toxic, I think, is a better word.”   
  
“Is he still alive?”   
  
“Far as I know.”   
  
Deadlock sets the soldering iron aside and vents a puff of air over his work. It’s crude and inelegant, but if it functions, that’s all that matters to him. “He a medic, too?”   
  
“A better one, to hear him tell it.”   
  
“And what do you think?”   
  
Ratchet’s field wavers, and beneath the bluster, there’s a flicker of self-doubt. “He’s probably right.” There’s a moment, a hesitation, and then his voice drops in volume. “We’re both Forged but Pharma is… gifted in a way few are.”   
  
Deadlock makes a noncommittal noise and flicks the panel on the motherboard closed. “Maybe, maybe not.” He pats the small transmitter he’s tried to repurpose into an emergency beacon. “But can he fix one of these?”   
  
“And get his hands dirty? Perish the thought?” Ratchet grunts a laugh and twists to peer over Deadlock’s shoulder. “Any luck?”   
  
Deadlock turns the transmitter over, the domed light on the top dark. “Let’s find out,” he says, and holds a finger on the switch. “If you’ve got a direct line to Primus, I suggest giving it a tap.”   
  
“Hah. He hasn’t cared in centuries.”   
  
“Good to know.” Deadlock cycles a ventilation, and flicks the switch.   
  
For a moment, nothing happens. He tries to think of any number of reasons why, but it’s impossible to guess given his substandard materials, substitutions, and bare knowledge. It could have been anything.   
  
The domed light flickers a dull yellow. Deadlock holds a vent, willing it to function. Flick-flick, and then it flares the pale green of readiness. Relief floods his spark. It’s impossible to tell if the beacon is actually functioning, because they’d need a receptive system, but it seems to be.   
  
“I think it’s working,” Deadlock says as he gingerly slides the transmitter a few inches across the table, out of reach in case the slightest disturbance breaks it all over again.   
  
“Thank the gods,” Ratchet says with a sigh of relief. He shoves his own project aside, the generator clattering to the floor. “I think I’m breaking this more than I’m fixing it. I have no idea what I’m doing.”   
  
Deadlock laughs and swings around on the bench, bracketing Ratchet from behind, his hands sliding along Ratchet’s sides until they meet over Ratchet’s abdomen. “You get points for effort,” he says, pressing a kiss behind Ratchet’s nearest audial, ex-venting hot and wet over it.   
  
Ratchet shivers in his hold, a light flush of heat reflected in his field. “Do we, uh, need to mount that or anything?”   
  
“Later.” Deadlock drags his mouth to the back of Ratchet’s neck, letting his denta explore the sensitive cables in front of him. “I think it’s time to celebrate a little.”   
  
Ratchet’s engine rumbles against his chest. “That so?” Fingers wrap around one of Deadlock’s wrists, tugging his hand down and down until it rests over Ratchet’s array. “Consider yourself invited.”   
  
Deadlock chuckles, his fingers rubbing circles over the closed panel. “Are you sure? This doesn’t seem very inviting to me.”  
  
“Work harder then,” Ratchet grunts, but his frame belies his nonchalance, because he pushes back into Deadlock, his hips rocking against Deadlock’s fingers.   
  
Deadlock’s hot vents tease the back of Ratchet’s audials. His free hand wraps around Ratchet, palming his belly, fingers tracking up and down, tracing seams. “What do I have to do to be convincing?” he murmurs.   
  
Ratchet shivers in his arms. His field unfurls, stroking over Deadlock’s with obvious need. “Well, you could finally show me this mod you’re being so damn coy about.”   
  
Deadlock laughs again, stroking his fingers hard over Ratchet’s panel. “You’re very persistent, aren’t you?”   
  
“I don’t like unsolved mysteries.” Ratchet bucks into his fingers, and the strain of holding himself back is painted in the tremble of his armor.   
  
Deadlock nibbles on the curve of Ratchet’s jaw, ex-venting warm and wet. “It’s not that special.”   
  
“Then why don’t you show me?” Ratchet demands, clearly a challenge.   
  
Deadlock rests his forehead on the nape of Ratchet’s neck and just laughs. Because this should be awkward and tense, but it’s absolutely not, and he can’t remember the last time he felt like this.   
  
“That’s not funny,” Ratchet says, indignant.   
  
“Didn’t say it was.” Deadlock presses against Ratchet’s back before he pushes himself to his feet, sliding his hands up Ratchet’s chassis as he does so. “If you want this mod, we need a berth.”   
  
“Getting boring in your old age,” Ratchet teases, but he pushes off the bench, and slips out of reach. He turns, arousal glittering in his optics. “Or maybe you’re just shy.”   
  
Deadlock growls.   
  
A smirk curves Ratchet’s lips.   
  
The chase is remarkably short, as there’s nowhere for Ratchet to go, and only one destination either of them particularly care for. Deadlock leaps over the bench and races after Ratchet anyway, because the best part of any chase is cornering and catching one’s quarry, and crowding Ratchet against the wall of the berthroom, slanting their mouths together, and hungrily claiming Ratchet’s mouth with his…   
  
Well, it sends arousal surging through his system like a bolt of lightning.   
  
He threads his fingers through Ratchet’s, pinning Ratchet’s hands above his head. Deadlock loves that they are of similar heights, though he knows Ratchet has him beat when it comes to mass. He loves that he notches his knee between Ratchet’s legs, and Ratchet moans as he rocks down against the pressure of it, need peppering in little starbursts of color in his field.   
  
Most of all, he loves Ratchet trusts him enough to be so playful.   
  
Ratchet rolls up against him, spike leaving a smear on Deadlock’s belly, his valve now bared and dripping hot-wet over Deadlock’s thigh. He returns the kiss with equal hunger, glossa plunging into Deadlock’s mouth as though this is a battle he’s determined to fight to the last breath.   
  
Deadlock growls and bites at Ratchet’s intake, the medic’s head tipping back, baring himself to Deadlock’s denta. “Do you want me to take you here, or do you want to see the mod?” he demands.   
  
Ratchet gasps, breathless. “Can’t it be both?”   
  
Oh, has a restraint kink does he?   
  
Deadlock’s engine revs. Fantasies unspool through his processor. Tying Ratchet down. Pinning him down. Binding his limbs. Keeping him forever, teasing him with the cusp of pleasure, until Ratchet writhes and begs for release. Him  _agreeing_  to it, handing his trust to Deadlock so eagerly, so openly.   
  
Primus.   
  
Need yaws inside of Deadlock, and he jolts, internals cycling into a higher rhythm of desire.   
  
“Later,” Deadlock says.   
  
He yanks Ratchet from the wall, spins him toward the too small berth. Ratchet goes willingly, his field sticky-hot against Deadlock’s, clinging to it, demanding pleasure.   
  
“It’s a knot,” Deadlock says as Ratchet’s knees hit the berth, and he stalls, fans spinning fast enough to vibrate his armor. Deadlock leaves biting kisses against Ratchet’s intake and collar, his hands wandering over every inch of red and white armor he can find.   
  
“I don’t think I need to explain to you how that works,” Deadlock adds.   
  
“No,” Ratchet says, and he shudders, and if Deadlock had felt even an inkling of disgust or fright in his field, he’d have stopped immediately.   
  
Instead, he nearly drowns in the wave of lust sweeping Ratchet’s field and pulsing liquid charge into Deadlock’s.   
  
“Have you ever taken a knot?” Deadlock slips a hand between Ratchet’s thighs, curling two fingers into a valve dripping lubricant, sticky-hot into his joints.   
  
Ratchet’s intake bobs under his lips. “Once.” He clutches at Deadlock’s shoulders, venting rapidly, and there’s a raw need to his voice.   
  
Deadlock growls. In that moment, he loathes whoever it was had treated Ratchet to the mod. It doesn’t matter though. Because he’s going to ruin Ratchet for that experience.   
  
He swears it.   
  
“Turn around,” Deadlock says.   
  
And Primus, Ratchet obeys. He shudders, head to foot, and turns in Deadlock’s arms. He leans over the berth, hands pressed to the surface, all without being told. His knees brace against the edge, legs inching apart, lubricant streaking the inside of his thighs.   
  
Deadlock’s intake bobs. He licks his lips. He can’t resist tasting.   
  
He drops to his knees, cradles Ratchet’s thighs, pulls them apart, and dives in. He licks a long, wet line up Ratchet’s valve, hears Ratchet whine and cant toward him. Ratchet drops to his elbows, tilting his aft further, opening himself up.   
  
He’s so wet, so swollen with desire. Deadlock hums and licks and sucks, fondling Ratchet’s anterior node with his lips, his glossa laving wet stripes over the plump rim. Ratchet’s lubricant is sticky sweet and the berth creaks where Ratchet rocks against it, his spike leaving streaks of lubricant over the covers.   
  
They’ll have to wash those again.   
  
Ratchet’s thighs quiver in Deadlock’s grip. “Please,” he moans, and his voice crackles. He sounds desperate.   
  
For Deadlock.   
  
Drift tugs at him, the need a craving deep in the pit of his spark. Deadlock gives Ratchet a lingering lick, savoring the taste, before he stands. He cradles Ratchet’s hips, bumps the head of his spike against his swollen rim.   
  
“You’ll tell me if it’s too much,” Deadlock says as he circles his hips, grinding again and again over Ratchet’s rim, lust peppering through his lines until he’s dizzy from it.   
  
“You’d have to start for that to happen!” Ratchet snaps, a bit of his old fire breaking from the haze of need.   
  
Well then.   
  
Deadlock licks his lips. “And I will. Tell me anyway,” he says, and rolls forward, not slamming into Ratchet as he suspects the Autobot expects, but pushing into him. Slow, so slow, gliding over every internal sensor and lighting them up one by one, bringing the swirl of charge around his spike to the tip, so when he finally bottoms out, it buzzes and nips at Ratchet’s ceiling node.   
  
Ratchet trembles beneath him. His backstrut arches. He moans, long and low.   
  
“Last chance to back out,” Deadlock says as he starts a series of slow, deep thrusts, metaphorical finger hovering over the activation key. “Once I start, I can’t stop. Not won’t. Can’t. We’ll both be stuck.”   
  
“I know how the fragging mod works,” Ratchet says, and Deadlock swears he hears the berth covers rip as Ratchet’s valve cycles down on him, rippling in a milking wave. “Do it.”   
  
Deadlock smooths a hand down Ratchet’s back, over his spinal strut. “Yes, Ratchet,” he purrs, and lets the mod initiate, his knot immediately beginning to swell.   
  
He thrusts harder now. Deeper. Grinding against Ratchet’s ceiling node as the knob at the base of his spike starts to pressurize and fill with fluid, engorging the knob. He feels it start to catch and tug at Ratchet’s rim, grinding against that inner ring of nodes, and Ratchet cries out, trembling beneath Deadlock’s touch.   
  
“Too much?” Deadlock asks, half-challenge, half-concern.   
  
Ratchet moans, and his elbows knock out from beneath him. He’s flat on his belly on the berth, knees falling over the edge, legs splayed wide. His hands twist in the covers, face tucked into the elbow of one arm. His voice is almost inaudible.   
  
Deadlock leans over him, blanketing Ratchet’s back with his front, changing the angle until he slides deep, and Ratchet’s rim contracts around his knot.   
  
“More,” he hears as he wraps his arms around Ratchet’s frame and mouths the back of Ratchet’s shoulders.   
  
Deadlock groans, arousal swimming through his circuits, his own knees wobbling as he thrusts again, and locks inside of Ratchet, his knot swelling almost to maximum. He can only rock his hips, grind over Ratchet’s ceiling node, and that’s when Ratchet shatters in his arms, overloading, hips grinding against the berth, valve spasming around Deadlock’s spike.   
  
A surge of possessiveness overtakes Deadlock’s reason. He bites at Ratchet’s audial, another growl spilling out of his intake.   
  
“You’re going to be mine,” he says, and Drift is chanting “yes, yes, yes” inside of him, or maybe that’s Ratchet, and he honestly can’t tell anymore. The secret fantasies and the current realities are clashing together.   
  
He overloads, again and again, a dozen tiny bursts of pleasure as his spike spills spurt after spurt of transfluid into Ratchet. His knot swells with each spurt, until it stretches the limits of Ratchet’s rim, until it grinds against the inner ring of nodes, as much as Deadlock’s spikehead notches over his ceiling node.   
  
Another overload makes Ratchet quake in his arms. Ratchet’s field is a liquid spill of charge, heat and hunger and something else, something in the depths Deadlock wants to cling to and keep forever: surrender.   
  
He braces his forehead against the back of Ratchet’s neck. He pants, ex-venting hot and wet over Ratchet’s upper shoulders, pleasure making him shake. His spark spins faster and hotter and tighter in his chassis.   
  
Deadlock overloads again. And again. And again. Until his transfluid tank empties and his hips jerk with dry spasms of his spike, and thick knob of his knot becomes impossible to remove. Ratchet whimpers beneath him, trembling, condensation gathering on his armor. His spark hammers in his chassis, Deadlock can feel it against the dermal metal of his fingertips, pressed as they are to Ratchet’s chest.   
  
“You alright?” Deadlock manages through the stutter in his vocalizer, coherency difficult with the pleasure swamping his processor.   
  
Ratchet moans, and his valve ripples, squeezing around Deadlock’s spike. “F-f-fine,” he slurs, his field wrapping around Deadlock’s, pulsing a mixture of pleasure and need and a demand for more.   
  
“Good.” Deadlock rolls his hips, unable to budge his knot from Ratchet’s valve, but able to stir a minor bit of motion, enough to reignite the sensors within Ratchet.   
  
The medic keens, his vents roaring.   
  
Primus, he’s the sexiest thing. Deadlock wants to keep him forever. Wants to keep this forever. Wants to just stay here, on this stupid asteroid, in this stupid crashed shuttle, with no one else around. No war. No moral quandaries. No questioning. Just the two of them, making it work, surviving.   
  
Together.   
  
He wants it to much it hurts.   
  
Deadlock pants against the back of Ratchet’s neck, optics squeezing shut on a sudden surge of  _want_  that has nothing to do with carnal desire, and everything to do with Drift surging to the forefront. Drift wanting things that can’t survive in the Decepticons. Drift wanting to be loved and held and treasured, wanting to do so in return.   
  
Wanting  _this_. Wanting  _him_. Ratchet.   
  
And it’s raw, so raw Deadlock can’t fight against it. He gives in to the urge to paint the back of Ratchet’s neck and head in soft kisses. To ex-vent hot and soft over Ratchet’s shoulders, to stroke the medic’s armor gently as his knot gradually deflates. Ratchet quivers beneath him, frame caught up in waves of pleasure, and it’s Deadlock-Drift-Deadlock who strokes him softly, who eases out of him rather than yanking free the moment he can.   
  
He chokes on words of triumph and claiming and pride. It’s only last minute scrambling for control that keeps him from whispering a confession.   
  
Deadlock slides his sated frame free of Ratchet’s. He stands there on wobbling knees, his hands smoothing over Ratchet’s aft, and his fingers stroking gentle patterns over the swollen, transfluid-wet rim of Ratchet’s valve.   
  
“One more?” Deadlock murmurs as he carefully strokes and pets, one finger rubbing light circles around a dimly flashing anterior node.   
  
Ratchet groans, rolls over with great effort, optics bright and hazy from pleasure. “You’re insatiable,” he says.   
  
“That’s not a ‘no’,” Deadlock says, and he can’t resist Ratchet’s lips, not as raw and swollen as they are from Ratchet gnawing on them.   
  
He leans over Ratchet, steals his mouth for a sweet, savoring kiss. His fingers keep up their gentle stroking, Ratchet so slick and hot beneath his derma, so yielding. Thighs clamp around Deadlock’s wrist, Ratchet moving in little rocks to grind his valve against Deadlock’s hand.   
  
“One more time,” Deadlock says against Ratchet’s lips. “Overload for me one more time,” he urges, and his fingers slide deep, and his thumb presses a soft circle around Ratchet’s nub, and Ratchet clutches at him and obeys.   
  
A shudder rattles over Ratchet’s frame. He rocks up, head tilting back, charge licking over his armor in blue curls of flame as he overloads again, slick spilling from his valve and his field slamming over Deadlock’s, the edges knitting together.   
  
Deadlock touches him gently, extending the pleasure, until Ratchet sags into the berth, vents whirring. The kiss softens, less claim and more savor, and Deadlock rests his hand on Ratchet’s thigh.   
  
He wants to keep this, Deadlock thinks.   
  
Tell him, Drift whispers, like the optimistic idiot he is. Before it’s too late.   
  
“I take it back,” Ratchet says, vocals rough and thick with exhaustion. “I don’t think you’re the least bit shy.”   
  
A laugh spills out of Deadlock before he can stop it, and he’s at once grateful for Ratchet’s dry humor, because it keeps him from making a terrible mistake.   
  
“I’ll get you a cloth,” he says, patting Ratchet’s thigh and moving to slide off the berth.   
  
“Good.” The medic groans and makes vague effort to pull himself further onto the berth before giving up. “You made a mess of me.”   
  
“It was your idea,” Deadlock reminds him as he tucks himself away. He’ll worry about an actual wash and a rinse later. “I take no responsibility for any regrets in the aftermath. Or if you’re ruined for any other lovers,” he adds as he pauses in the doorway, casting Ratchet a wink.   
  
Ratchet rolls his optics and offers a rather rude gesture in return.   
  
Deadlock laughs and slips out of the door, taking the moment to cycle a ventilation and re-center himself. It’s just interfacing, he says as he wipes himself down and dampens a cloth to bring back for Ratchet. It’s just boredom. It’s a foolish notion.   
  
It doesn’t mean anything, no matter how loudly Drift wails.   
  
It can’t mean anything.   
  
And he already knows, it never will.   
  


~

 


	11. Chapter 11

Ratchet lurches online to the noise of an audial-splitting shriek and a rattle so loud it makes the entire shuttle shudder. He startles, trying to find wakefulness in the sea of recharge fog, but Deadlock lurches out of the berth as though there are rockets attached to his aft. He has his blasters drawn and yanks open the door to the berth room before Ratchet manages to swing his legs over the side of the berth.   
  
Another crashing noise boots Ratchet’s defensive protocols in a flash, and he stumbles off the berth, fumbling for his blaster as he gives Deadlock chase. Bright lights pour in from the rear hatch that’s been wrenched open, and Ratchet nearly hits Deadlock’s back as the Decepticon stops and aims his blasters, frame vibrating with threat.   
  
“What is it?” Ratchet asks, through the comm, atmosphere rushing out through the hole in the rear hatch.   
  
“We’ll see,” Deadlock says and smoothly steps in front of Ratchet when Ratchet tries to move beside him.   
  
Well then.   
  
He’ll just stay back here.   
  
Shapes move in front of the bright light, casting thin shadows across the floor. Friend? Foe? It’s impossible to tell.   
  
Ratchet squints, barely able to make out bodies smaller than he and Deadlock. Perhaps half their height, wrapped in some sort of bodysuit, with a heavy helm surrounding a small head. They’re bipedal, and all Ratchet can make through the clear substance of their helmet is pale purple skin and multiple eyes and a mouth that seems to lack teeth behind very thin lips.  
  
There are three of them, and as far as Ratchet can tell, none of them carry weapons. One has what appears to be a welding torch, another has a large sack hanging from each shoulder, and the third carries nothing visible. The body suits are too tight to possibly conceal a weapon, unless this species has determined how to have a subspace of their own.   
  
Ratchet waits.   
  
Deadlock does, too.   
  
They can’t speak, not without atmosphere to carry the sound. The alien in front, probably the leader, swings its head left and right. It takes in Ratchet and Deadlock, and behind its mask, the thin lips droop into a frown. One hand lifts, and there’s some kind of device in it, pitifully small. Bright lights flash on it, faster and faster, as the entity swivels its hand toward the table.   
  
And the emergency beacon resting on it.   
  
“Rescuers?” Ratchet whispers into the comm. He doesn’t know why he’s whispering. But he steps close enough for his chest to bump against Deadlock’s back.   
  
“Or pirates,” Deadlock replies.   
  
The leader alien moves swiftly toward the beacon and picks it up, turning it over in a hand bearing at least seven fingers and an extra thumb. It flicks the button on top, which turns off the beacon. At this, the entity shifts its attention to Ratchet and Deadlock, and gestures at them with the beacon.   
  
Ratchet narrows his optics.   
  
The alien gestures again.   
  
Deadlock lowers one arm, but keeps his weapon at the ready. He nods slowly – a nice universal gesture of confirmation. Ratchet’s not met a species yet who didn’t understand the point of a nod.   
  
The alien’s lips curve into a wide grin. It reaches up with a free hand and taps its head. Its lips move, and Deadlock shakes his head negatively.   
  
Thin lips twist with agitation before it taps its head again, and again, until Ratchet hears the sudden crackle through his comm. A voice comes through, soft and smooth, with a faint echo, like it’s being directed through a translator.   
  
“--me now? Yes?”   
  
Ratchet nods as Deadlock maintains his silence. “Friend or foe?” he replies, his own fingers still resting on the grip of his blaster, ready to fire if necessary.   
  
“Friend, I assure you,” the alien says. It makes a vague gesture to its companions, who dip their heads in a nod. Their stances shift into something a little less wary. “Cybertronian, yes? We picked up your beacon when we passed over, though we’ve had this site marked to salvage for a week now.”   
  
Salvagers. Are they better or worse than the Penta? Ratchet doesn’t have a clue.   
  
Deadlock, however, lowers his other blaster and both of them abruptly vanish into his subspace. “You’re Collectors,” he says.   
  
The alien tips its head up, and the grin widens. “You’ve heard of us then? Good. That saves us an explanation.” It turns and gestures. “Come. Follow me.” It pauses and holds up a hand, folding the other behind its back. “You are not attached to this wreck, are you?”  
  
Deadlock holds up a finger. “Keep it,” he says. “But I need to get something first.”   
  
Ratchet arches an orbital ridge. “What could you possibly need?”   
  
“Our engex.” Deadlock points a wink over his shoulder, grin sly, lips curved back over his denta, and it’s unfair, how that smirk slithers straight to Ratchet’s groin and coils hot and heavy in his array.   
  
The evidence of their coupling last night still sits tacky on their frames. He doesn’t know if these Collectors know enough about Cybertronians to recognize the residue, but it still causes shame to heat Ratchet’s cheeks.   
  
It’s like the Collectors have come and popped a bubble on an impossible dream. It’s only been a couple weeks, trapped on this shuttle, but it seems longer. Like he could have stayed here, and forgotten the war entirely, and eventually, forgotten he was supposed to hate Deadlock on principle.   
  
“We’ll wait for you outside,” the alien says, tipping their head again, before slipping out the hole in the rear hatch, taking their companions with them.   
  
The glow remains, beaming inside the shuttle like a searchlight. Deadlock immediately sets off on a hunt for their engex, and Ratchet joins him, a strange anxiety curling in his spark.   
  
“Rescue came that quick, huh?” Ratchet comments as he pulls out the spare medkit and shoves it in his subspace. No point in leaving it for scavengers.   
  
“A lucky break,” Deadlock replies, sounding distracted. And not at all disappointed about it either.   
  
Well.   
  
Ratchet’s not either.   
  
He finishes stuffing supplies into his compartments just as the entire shuttle shakes and he has to catch his balance. He rushes to the rear hatch, into the bright light, and finds a very large ship hovering over the shuttle. It’s fired two spear-tipped cables at the wreckage, embedding them in the thickest parts of the hull.   
  
“I think that’s their way of telling us to get a move on.” Deadlock steps up beside Ratchet, tapping him on the side of his arm with something.   
  
It’s one of the bottles of engex, unopened still, the bright label of Ratchet’s favorite brewery gleaming up at him.   
  
“It’s a gift,” Deadlock says with an uncharacteristic wink and another wiggle of the bottle. “To commemorate our time together.”   
  
Ratchet takes the bottle, tucking it under his arm. “You did say they were for celebration.”   
  
“Then I guess we’ll have to find each other when the war’s over.” Deadlock laughs and hops down from the ship, landing gracefully on the surface of the asteroid.   
  
The ship rocks, nearly sending Ratchet careening out the rear hatch, as the cables start to retract, drawing the wreckage toward some kind of clamp on the underside of the Collector’s ship. So much for waiting. By outside, the alien must have meant ‘inside our ship, please climb the cargo ramp’ because that’s all there is left to do.   
  
Ratchet leaps down with less grace than Deadlock, walking away from the wreck that had been his home for the better part of a month. There’s no point in turning back to watch the shuttle as its pulled into position, but he does anyway. An odd sense of loss crawls over his processor, like the knowledge the ship is going to be salvaged and repurposed and sold for scrap, is somehow analogous to a pointless dream about a war that never was, and a conjunx he could have had.   
  
Bah.   
  
He’s getting sentimental for no reason.  
  
Ratchet trudges into the Collectors’ ship, refusing to look back again. Deadlock is far ahead of him, moving so quick he’d almost be running. If he looks back, Ratchet doesn’t see him do it.   
  
No sentimentality in him apparently.   
  
Ratchet cycles a ventilation and crests the ramp as one of the suited aliens comes up to him, different than the one before. This one is taller, their skin more of a sea-green and speckled with glitter, their eyes fewer in number but larger in appearance.   
  
“We have become accustomed to mechanicals lately,” the alien says, their voice heavier, deeper, with a harsh rasp. “Can I take you to a room?”   
  
Ratchet eyes the alien. “Why so helpful?”   
  
“Laws of Space Reclamation,” the alien says as they curl an arm around Ratchet’s and tug him forward with unexpected strength. They’re barely half Ratchet’s height, but prods him forward with no trouble at all. “If you’d been deceased, your shuttle would be rightfully ours. However, you were both online, therefore the ship and its contents belong to you. We are purchasing your rights by answering your distress beacon and rendering aid.”   
  
“Oh.” Ratchet’s head spins a little. It’s all happening so fast.   
  
He cranes his neck, can barely see Deadlock led in another direction by the alien from earlier, or at least, he assumes they are the leader alien.   
  
“You and your companion are differently branded,” Ratchet’s escort continues as they step through an automatic door and into a small room – a pressurization chamber. “We assumed you’d wish to be quartered separately. Were we mistaken?”   
  
With this, multiple large eyes look Ratchet up and down, lingering briefly on his thighs before the alien looks at his face again. If Ratchet has to guess, that weirdly plastic expression is one of curiosity but no judgment.   
  
The doors shut. Lights flash. Something beeps and the vents hiss, blasting them with atmosphere. Sound returns just like that, the hiss and creak of his own frame, the steadying noise of a functioning ship around them.   
  
His escort reaches up, palms the side of their mask with their free hand, and the helmet and mask both retract into a thin ring around their neck. Two sets of antennae spring from their bare heads, bobbing playfully in the last gusts of pressurized air.   
  
“There, now is that not easier?” the alien asks, the voice as deep and resonant aloud as it had been within Ratchet’s comm. “My name, by the way, is Illithon, and I will be your point of contact for the duration of our assistance. Might I have the pleasure of yours?”   
  
“Ratchet,” he grunts.   
  
Illithon releases a sound Ratchet might charitably call a giggle. “You Cybertronians and your silly names.” They pat Ratchet on the arm. “Now don’t take offense, I know it’s a loose translation. I assume it’s related, in some manner, to your skillset.”   
  
Ratchet cycles a ventilation. “I’m a medic.”   
  
“A doctor? What in Althea’s Grand Blessings is a doctor doing out here on the Fringe?”   
  
The doors blat noisily at them and open, spilling them into a wide hallway positively choked with more of Illithon’s kind, though none of them wear the thin bodysuit. Instead, these are dressed in loose, flowing robes which flap around them in dizzying arrays of color.   
  
Ratchet’s head aches.   
  
“I’m on vacation,” he answers as Illithon tugs him down the hallway, against the flow of the crowd.   
  
To their credit, none of Illithon’s compatriots do more than cast Ratchet a curious glance. Apparently, Ratchet is not the first Cybertronian they’ve encountered. They are quite lucky to have not met an untimely demise.   
  
Cybertronians aren’t well liked in the universe, Ratchet knows. Strange that Illithon and their kind seem to be the exception to that.   
  
Or maybe Ratchet’s wandered into a trap not unlike the waystation where he’d found himself in the Penta’s grasp. Then again, Deadlock had trusted the Collectors immediately, which means Ratchet trusts them by proxy.   
  
What a strange universe his life has become.   
  
Illithon makes that raspy laughing sound again. “So you say. A pity it had to end like this.” Multiple eyes give Ratchet a knowing look, something sparkly glimmering across their pupil-less interiors. “You’re certain you don’t wish to share a room with your companion?” There’s something in the question, an implication, Ratchet doesn’t like. Not just there might be a hint of truth to it.   
  
“I’m sure,” he says, careful to keep his tone curt. “Now are you taking me somewhere with a comm? I’m ready to get on my way.”   
  
Illithon pats his arm. “Yes, of course. The room we have for you will have everything you require.” Illithon hums happily. “Refreshment. Solvent. A communication station. A bed to rest upon. Feel free to contact whomever you wish. We can make arrangements for safe passage, should you require it.”  
  
“And I’m not allowed to leave, I’d guess,” Ratchet says.   
  
“Of course you are!” Illithon actually sounds offended. “We’re not captors or heathens. You are here as guests, as customers. You are free to go wherever you like that’s considered a public space.” They gesture grandly. “Private quarters are off limits, but that’s only to be expected. Also, visitors are not allowed on the bridge or in the engine room, but otherwise, feel free to explore as you wish.”   
  
Ratchet nods slowly. “You’ll excuse me if I’m a little bit suspicious.”   
  
“You are Cybertronian after all.” Illithon pats him on the arm again and tugs him in the direction of a long corridor, one taller and broader than the others, with doors of better size to accommodate Ratchet. “Anyway, this room is yours for the duration of your stay.” They gesture toward it and give the door a push to open. “It doesn’t lock when you leave, so I recommend you keep your valuables upon your person.”   
  
“Noted.”   
  
Ratchet slips inside as Illithon lingers in the doorway. “You may reach me on the comm, should you have any questions. Please. Enjoy your stay.”   
  
Illithon smiles, the perfectly practiced thin-lipped grin of an individual trained in customer service – as falsely sincere as possible – and vanishes out the door, closing it behind them. Ratchet’s shoulders slump in their absence, at last able to draw a vent for himself, one that doesn’t feel stifled.   
  
The room is smaller than the average Cybertronian habsuite, but adequately furnished. There’s a berth Ratchet can fit upon, a console built into the wall – the comm he assumes – and when he opens a cabinet, he finds an array of bottled fluids inside, perfect for the mechanical being. Even energon.   
  
How many Cybertronian wrecks have they salvaged, he wonders?   
  
A smaller door off to the side reveals a tiny washrack, even smaller than the one on the shuttle. There’s barely enough room for himself much less an additional frame, if he’d felt so inclined to invite Deadlock. It doesn’t matter. They’ve gone their separate ways, back to the status quo, as it should be.   
  
He’ll think no more of flashy Decepticons with talented hands and unexpectedly enticing smiles.   
  
Ratchet bathes first, letting the warm solvent wash away all evidence of his interactions with Deadlock, the grit and grime of the crash, and the last vestiges of shame. He lingers in the washrack, indulging for long enough he threatens to waterlog his substructure, before he steps out in view of a full-length mirror.   
  
His armor is scratched and scraped, marked by long strips of paint that aren’t his own. He has no supplies to touch it up, but he supposes he can get that fixed when he returns to the Autobots. It’s not like they’ll be able to read his liaisons with a Decepticon in the shade of paint scraped along his thigh.   
  
He drops down in front of the comm console next, booting it up with a few quick flicks of his fingers. It’s a standard configuration, one he’s seen in numerous waystations and public-use installations. It’s easy enough to plug in and verify his identity, and he debates for several long moments about who to contact first.   
  
Or at all.   
  
Has anyone noticed him missing? He’d not checked in as he should have, but did anyone take note of it?   
  
Ratchet can’t log into the Autobot intranetwork from a universal station like this unfortunately. He has no way of knowing. Even whatever message he sends could take weeks to get to someone who’d care. By the time it’s routed from one net to another, he could very well be back home.   
  
He composes a message to Wheeljack just in case. He doesn’t know how long it will take before he returns to the base.   
  
There’s a part of him that isn’t sure it’s where he intends to head first and foremost. He never did get much of a vacation after all.   
  
Ratchet sits, hands on the keyboard, words failing him now as much as they do in person. He feels a need for advice, and knows he’s not going to get it. He hates the inner turmoil, the conflict, in general. It should be an easy choice. He shouldn’t be debating anything at all.   
  
He belongs with his friends, with the Autobots.   
  
Doesn’t he?  
  
Ratchet growls and leans back in the chair, palming his face. What the frag does he think he’s doing? Why is he letting this nag at him? Why does he care?   
  
It was a few weeks at best! Two weeks of tension and arguing and yes, some outrageously great interfacing, but that’s it. He has a place he belongs. He has a place he’s needed. Ratchet doesn’t need a press release to know the war still goes strong. Mechs are dying while Ratchet sits here and hesitates.   
  
He clicks out of the comm program and opens up the intranet for the ship. He finds a map, downloads it, locates a common area on it. There’s a transportation nexus as well, and Ratchet selects the option before he can do something stupid and ignore it.   
  
The ship will dock at a waystation later this evening. From there, he can find safe passage back to the sector where the Autobots are currently based. He can even purchase tickets on a passenger ship from the Collector database. At a discount, no less, thanks to the trade he and Deadlock are unofficially making.   
  
Ratchet gnaws on the inside of his cheek.   
  
He purchases a ticket before he allows himself to do otherwise. One way, out of the Fringe, and back to the sunside of the Chlori Cluster, where the bulk of the Autobot army orbits a husk of a satellite. They’ll make an assault on the nearby Decepticon forces any cycle now. Or at least, that had been the plan before Ratchet had been urged on his sabbatical.   
  
He can only pray they are still there.   
  
Ticket purchased, his decision made, there’s nothing left to do but wait until the Collectors’ ship docks at the waystation. He has no interest in the berth, recharge won’t come to him he knows, but the map informs him of a common area. Perhaps he’ll get lucky and find something to drink. If not, well, he still has the bottle of engex Deadlock had given to him.   
  
A parting gift, as it were.   
  
Ratchet can’t very well take it with him. There’ll be too many questions, ones he especially doesn’t want to answer. He might as well finish it before he goes back.   
  
He leaves the room he’s been granted – it doesn’t lock behind him, as Illithon mentions. Good thing he’s carrying all he presently owns. The hallway is still choked with more of Illithon’s kind, but they pay him no more mind than they did before. Apparently, strange aliens walking among them is nothing unusual.   
  
Ratchet consults the map he downloaded and follows the surging tide of aliens several hallways over, until a set of doors slides open and reveals an open space, the ceiling far above and set with panes of some clear material. Space stretches far and wide above him, white lights dancing in the endless black.   
  
Conversation lingers as ambient noise. Several different musics play soft and tinny underneath the current of speech. Different varieties of aliens wander in greater abundance here, and relief trickles over Ratchet’s shoulders. No wonder the Collectors had not been startled. Perhaps Ratchet had been shown the mechanicals hall?   
  
He wanders through the large space, passing by a corner that is clearly some kind of trader’s market, and another corner that seems to cater exclusively to the smaller, more squishier organics. There’s an open space sectioned off by a low fence with wide slots, and Ratchet peers inside. It’s some kind of dispensary, he guesses, and that’s when he spots a familiar back and set of finials.   
  
Deadlock.   
  
He’s perched at one of the tables, hunched over something in front of him, his pose half-relaxed and half-tense.   
  
Ratchet tells himself to keep walking. He can find entertainment elsewhere. There’s plenty to pass the time before the ship docks and he sets out to find his transport.   
  
His feet carry him into the dispensary. He beelines for Deadlock, something twisting and squeezing inside of him. Something he can’t put a word on. Past and present colliding, swirling in front of a nebulous future.   
  
He doesn’t walk away.   
  
Instead, he walks toward Deadlock, without any idea of why, only knowing he needs something more than a faint smirk before they part ways.   
  


****


	12. Chapter 12

The Collectors are the kinder, gentler solution to the Pentas.   
  
Deadlock will never admit aloud to the surge of relief he feels when he recognizes what has found them. It’s a stroke of luck they’ve sorely needed.   
  
He’s quite sure Ratchet is ecstatic rescue is at hand.   
  
Deadlock makes it easy. He stays brusque, flippant, putting distance between himself and Ratchet as quickly as possible, before Drift can rise up and beg for something foolish. He doesn’t look back when one of the Collectors leads Ratchet in another direction.   
  
“You will give us full scavenger’s rights then?” Araya asks as they deposit Deadlock in a room for his personal use, kitted to the maximum as always.   
  
This isn’t the first time Deadlock’s had dealings with the Collectors. They are the definition of space neutrality, and they have the arms to defend themselves from anyone who might challenge them. The only loyalty they have is to themselves and to wealth, though it’s arguable which they prioritize.   
  
Which isn’t to say they aren’t sympathetic or completely without empathy. Not every service requires coin. But they don’t fight in wars, and they supply all sides equally, and rescue stranded spacefarers of all kinds.   
  
“Yeah. For me and the other guy.” Deadlock flops down on the berth and groans at the indulgent softness of it. “Just get him wherever he wants to go.”   
  
Araya lingers in the doorway, their lips pursed, a glance that’s almost concern in their many, small eyes. “And you?”   
  
Deadlock folds his arms over his head and stares at the immaculate ceiling, lacking so much as a rust stain to measure and memorize. “I want a ship. Small. Fast. Disposable.”   
  
“That can be provided.”   
  
“You guys really put a lot of worth in Cybertronian junk, don’t you?”   
  
“You’d be surprised.” Araya’s tone thickens with amusement, light though their voice is. “A word of caution, Decepticon. The Pentaflexiamoriantrichoglycerites are looking for one they call oath-breaker. He matches your description.”   
  
Deadlock groans and throws an arm over his optics. “Of course they are.” And he’d bet half the credits in his accounts Turmoil’s given them everything they need to know about tracking him down.   
  
Turmoil has been itching for an excuse to be rid of Deadlock. How convenient that one should arrive for him. He must have seen it as a sign from Unicron.   
  
Aft.   
  
Deadlock will have to kill him one day, and he relishes the idea of it. He’ll have to wait for a prime opportunity of course. Perhaps arrange something so he maintains his favor within the ranks, if he so desires.   
  
“How much more is stealth and amnesia going to cost me?” Deadlock asks.   
  
Araya laughs, high-pitched and raspy, just shy of grating on Deadlock’s audials. “Your salvage is not enough.”   
  
“I have credits of my own. Just tell me how much,” Deadlock says.  
  
Araya makes a noise of amused contemplation. “Very well. I’ll see what we have available or what can be outfitted and contact you with a price.”   
  
Deadlock shutters his optics, cycling several steadying ventilations. “I’ll know if you cheat me.”   
  
“On my honor as a Collector, I would never.” Araya, at least, doesn’t sound offended. Probably hears such a thing a lot. They make another noise, a cross between a hum and a chirp. “And your companion? Shall I fetch him for you?”   
  
Deadlock’s optics snap back online. He sits up and pins Araya with narrow optics, his fingers curling into the berth. “You already know there’s no need. Why do you keep asking?”   
  
“Oh. Because it seems that there is something left undone.” Araya examines their fingers, wriggling all eight of them as though they are of great fascination. “I’ll apologize if I’m mistaken, but you mechanicals are not as difficult to read as you think you are.”   
  
Deadlock sneers. “You’re mistaken.”   
  
“Fair enough.” Humor echoes rich in Araya’s voice. “I’ll leave you in peace then. The room is yours. You can use the console as you wish, including to contact me should you need it. And… I wish you luck, Decepticon.”   
  
He slides off the berth, feet hitting the ground. “I don’t need luck.”   
  
“Of course you don’t. My mistake,” Araya drawls before tipping their head in a bow and backing out of the room, the door sliding shut behind them.   
  
Deadlock growls, though the threat is lost on the Collector. Strength belies their small forms, Deadlock knows. They may be friendlier than the Pentas, but they are equally dangerous. Within their blood swirls something Deadlock can only describe as magic, though he imagines Shockwave would scoff at the idea.   
  
He has no interest in loitering in his room. They’ll be docking at a waystation soon enough. With a cargo as big as the shuttle to tear apart, the Collectors will want to be stationary. He can leave once they dock.   
  
Until then, well, he’s quite sure there’s a bar somewhere on board.   
  
Deadlock rinses off in the washrack, pointedly ignoring the bright scrapes of red and white marring his paint. He purposefully doesn’t think about Ratchet because that is an impossibility that doesn’t bear further contemplation. He’s moving on, not back toward the war because apparently that avenue is closed to him at the moment, but toward something.   
  
He’ll figure it out.   
  
Clean, still dripping, Deadlock abandons the room they so graciously lent him, and wanders the corridors, wading through crowds and crowds of Collectors. He probably should’ve taken the time to download a schematic of the ship, but he’s in no hurry.   
  
It takes grabbing one of the passing Collectors and asking before he finds the common area of the ship. It’s a massive open space, a windowed ceiling stretching far and wide above, and the interior stretching out further than he can perceive. While the Collectors themselves are a species half Deadlock’s height, they’ve built the common area to accommodate species large and small.   
  
He finds the bar. He picks the best table he can, tucked in a corner, away from the crowds. He orders the best engex they have on tap, impressed they have engex at all, and he drinks.   
  
It’s not for celebration. It’s not for regret. It just is.   
  
He ignores Drift. He ignores the tiny flicker of not-quite-hope, but ridiculous imagining instead. The one he’d let curl around the depths of his spark while trapped on that shuttle with Ratchet.   
  
Two weeks. Barely two weeks as the chronometer clicks.   
  
In the lifespan of the average Cybertroninan, it’s a blip. It’s nothing. It doesn’t matter. So he’s going to drink his engex until he forgets he ever wanted it to.   
  
Which is of course the moment Ratchet appears in his peripheral vision.   
  
Deadlock hunches his shoulders, wonders if there’s any chance Ratchet hasn’t noticed him, but fate is not so kind. The chair in front of him pulls out, but fingers linger on the back of it.   
  
“This seat taken?” Ratchet asks.   
  
“Not my ship to decide otherwise,” Deadlock says as he leans back and spreads his hands. He gives Ratchet a lazy grin and snags his cup of engex once more. “You know we’re not obligated to stick together now.”   
  
Ratchet snorts and slides down into the chair, which gives a little creak beneath him. Medics. A lot heavier than they look. “What’re you drinking?”   
  
“They actually have engex here, if you can believe it.” Deadlock rolls his shoulders and tips the cup so Ratchet can see the contents.   
  
“They seem to have everything.” Ratchet braces his arms on the table, shoulders hunched, gaze distant. “We got lucky.”   
  
Deadlock makes a noncommittal noise, hiding his face behind his engex. “Someone must be looking out for you.”   
  
“Primus hasn’t cared in centuries,” Ratchet retorts, a sour note to his tone. His hands curl briefly before he tangles them together. “I’m guessing you found passage back to… wherever the Decepticons are these days.”   
  
“Nope.”   
  
Ratchet cycles his optics and drags his gaze to Deadlock. “I thought we were owed it.”   
  
“We are.” Deadlock sets down the cup, cycles an audible ventilation. “I’m just not going back to the Decepticons.”   
  
“What?” Ratchet frowns, his field flaring with confusion and something else, something beneath the surface Deadlock can’t read without invitation.   
  
“I’m done,” Deadlock says. He lifts his cup again, stares into the depths of it, swirls around the thick, brightly-colored mixture. “Done with the war. Done with the pointlessness of it all.” Done with the political pitslag. He’s tired of fighting his allies for a scrap of notice. “I’m not going back.”   
  
Ratchet stares at him, thunderstruck, and that doesn’t take a deeper look to recognize. “What’re you going to do?”   
  
A server chooses that moment to slide by, pretty smile on their pretty lips, diamond-like glitter reflected in sea foam skin. “Would you like another?” the Collector asks, their antennae tilting toward Deadlock, probably to sense the state of his field. Collectors are odd like that.   
  
“Yeah. Keep it coming,” Deadlock says, tapping the table around his cup. He tilts his head toward Ratchet. “Bring one for him, too.”   
  
“I can buy my own drinks,” Ratchet says.   
  
Deadlock holds the Collector’s gaze, ignoring the medic. “One for him,” he repeats.   
  
Three sets of eyes blink in eerie precision. “Certainly.” They smile, tip their head, and vanish back into the crowd.   
  
“You’re not spending your creds,” Deadlock points out as he takes a big gulp of his engex. The burn of it is almost an afterthought, and the warmth of it in his tank is a comfort. “Your’e spending the salvage rights of our busted-aft ship.”   
  
“Our?” Ratchet snorts. “That was your ship through and through. I just had the misfortune of crashing in it with you.”   
  
Deadlock rolls his shoulders. “Then maybe I’m a generous person.” He grins, flashes his denta, and taps his chestplate. “Must be the Decepticon in me.”   
  
It may or may not be a subtle reminder of what he is.   
  
“Thought you were quitting?” Ratchet points out.   
  
“I’m keeping my options open.”   
  
Ratchet twists his jaw. “What are you even going to do?”   
  
“I don’t know.” Deadlock stares past him, squints at the far wall, gaze tracing the weird painted swirl pattern that decorates it. “Bought a ship and it better be stealthy. Figure I’ll take off for parts unknown. Solve the mysteries of the universe. Figure out some answers.” His grin slides crooked. “Find the Knights of Cybertron. Who the frag knows.”  
  
Ratchet stares at him. “The Knights of Cybertron?” he repeats, incredulous. “Deadlock, that’s ridiculous.”   
  
He arches an orbital ridge. “More ridiculous than an ongoing civil war that’s causing us to slaughter each other in the millions?”   
  
The server returns, sliding a cup in front of Ratchet, and tips a decanter over Deadlock’s, filling it to the brim. Deadlock murmurs a thank you, and they wink, which is somehow less odd than the synchronous blinking.   
  
Ratchet curls his fingers around the cup and stares in at the engex. His frown has softened, more contemplative than incredulous. “So you’re going to abandon the Decepticons.”   
  
“Yep.” Deadlock pops the word, paints it with dismissal, and takes a long drink of his refilled cup, humming as the silky warmth of it coats his intake.   
  
“You’re not worried about the consequences?”   
  
He snorts, unable to hide his amusement, or perhaps not caring about it. “Can’t be any worse than the fate awaiting me if I go back. I’m dead no matter what.” He leans back, affects a casual recline, letting his gaze wander over Ratchet, letting Drift look his fill. “At least this way, I get to enjoy whatever time I have left when they come for me.”   
  
Ratchet gnaws on his bottom lip. He raps the fingers of one hand on the table. “You’re the one who argued about how important the Decepticons were for you. What changed?”   
  
“What this stands for, that’s still relevant,” Deadlock bites out, thumping the badge on his chassis once more. “But the mechs gathering around the symbol sometimes forget that. And I’d rather get out while it still matters to me.”   
  
He swears to everything he believes in that if Ratchet starts another political and philosophical discussion, Deadlock will start a brawl here in the middle of the Collectors’ common room. He’s tired of defending himself and his choices.   
  
Ratchet, however, looses a long sigh. “Belief and practice aren’t always the same thing,” he says slowly, carefully. He ponders his cup of engex before taking a long drink of it. “There comes a point where you have to be loyal to your spark before anything else.”   
  
“Well, at least you understand that much.” Deadlock smirks and lifts his cup in salute. “And what about you?”   
  
Ratchet tilts his cup toward Deadlock in returned salute. His free hand slips a chip from subspace, and he sets it on the counter. “Booked transport back home. There’s a shuttle leaving from the waystation in a few hours.”   
  
“Back into the fray,” Deadlock murmurs around the lip of his cup, ignoring the squeeze-pull around his spark. “Good for you.”   
  
“I guess you think I’m making the wrong choice.”   
  
Deadlock lifts and drops his shoulders. “It’s not my place to decide whether you are or not. That’s sort of more your thing than mine.” He chuckles darkly and makes a vague gesture. “Though feel free to tell me why you’re so eager to die.”   
  
Ratchet scowls. “You don’t know that’s what’s going to happen.”   
  
“Don’t I?” Deadlock arches an orbital ridge. “Where do you think the war is going to take us, if two mechs on opposite sides can barely hold a decent conversation when there are no commanding officers around to tell them otherwise?” He tightens his grip on his cube. “You think there’s going to be peace? Victory? You think there’s any future where we survive this?”   
  
Ratchet’s jaw twitches. “I think giving up is always the wrong choice.”   
  
“Your funeral.” Deadlock shrugs. “Surviving, by the way, is not giving up.”   
  
“Abandoning my friends, my allies, is not how I want to survive,” Ratchet retorts.   
  
Deadlock tilts his head. “Well, then. As I said, don’t let me stop you.” He drinks his engex, nibbles on the edge of the cup, ignores Drift’s howls and pleas to change Ratchet’s mind.   
  
Ratchet’s optics darken. He stares down at the table, fingers fiddling with his cup, his field blanketing his frame. He reaches for the chip with his transport ticket on it, and turns it over and over in his fingers.   
  
“I can’t abandon my friends,” he says, but it’s soft. Quiet.   
  
“Then don’t.”   
  
Ratchet gnaws on his bottom lip. The chip spins faster and faster in his fingers, his engex forgotten. His field wavers around his frame, and Deadlock catches a brief taste of raw indecision, a flood of emotions too quick to identify.   
  
“People will die without me,” he says.   
  
“People are going to die regardless,” Deadlock replies, but quietly. Gently. He’s not here to pressure, to presume, to convince. Whatever choice Ratchet makes, it’ll be with optics wide open.   
  
Deadlock’s not letting the Autobot blame the Decepticon.   
  
Ratchet taps the chip on the table. Tap-tap-tap. His lips press together, a thinner and thinner line.   
  
“I am,” he says, pauses, cycles an audible vent. “I am on vacation.”   
  
Deadlock blinks. His orbital ridges draw down. “What’s that mean?”   
  
“It means, I’m on vacation.” Ratchet sits up and leaves the chip on the table between them, withdrawing his fingers from it.   
  
A burble of hope that can only come from Drift dares pepper its way through Deadlock’s spark. “You’re leaving the war?”   
  
“No. I’m on vacation.” Ratchet braces his elbows on the table, threading his fingers together. “And I understand why Optimus insisted on it now.”   
  
“Okay. Care to share with the class?”   
  
Ratchet gives him a look, one Deadlock can’t define, but when he starts to talk, Deadlock feels like he’s being let in on something deeply personal. As if Ratchet’s sharing a special part of him, and Deadlock is being given a gift of some kind.   
  
“For a moment, I was tempted,” Ratchet says, head bowing, optics focusing on the table. “I wanted to set it all down and walk away. All I could see was the energon on my hands, the sparks I haven’t saved, the things I couldn’t do. And all I saw in that was hopelessness. As if nothing I did mattered. That I didn’t matter.”   
  
Deadlock’s vents catch in his intake. He feels like he should say something, should protest to the contrary, should try and offer reassurances or comfort. Admit that he’s wrong, too. He’s lashing out because the war isn’t going his way either, and one of the things Drift wants is right in front of him, but far out of reach.   
  
Silence grips his glossa instead.   
  
“That was when I realized if I went back to the war, I  _would_  die, not because the war is hopeless, but because I didn’t have any faith.” Ratchet shakes his head, his lips curving into a frown. “Not in Primus, because I’ve never had that, but I didn’t have any faith in me. In my allies. In what I was doing. And I can’t fight like that. I’m no good to anyone like that, least of all myself.”   
  
Deadlock nods slowly. “And so…?”  
  
“So I’m on vacation.” Ratchet straightens, as if pulling into himself and gathering a mantle of strength he’d let slip aside for a brief moment. “I’m going to find  _something_ , and then I’ll decide what I’m going to do. Maybe I’ll go back to the war. Maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll find something else I need to fight for.”   
  
He lowers his arms, spreads his hands. “I need this. Time away. Time to myself. Time to figure out what I’m fighting for because I need a sense of conviction.” He pauses and tilts his head. “And I admit – grudgingly – I admire you for yours.”   
  
Deadlock’s spark flutters. His lips curve into a genuine smile. “Why Ratchet, I think that’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me.”   
  
Ratchet snorts and rolls his optics. “You never said you wanted romancing.” He eyes Deadlock, and there’s a heat banking behind the blue. “Though if you do, maybe I can figure something out.”   
  
Deadlock cycles his optics. Cycles them again. Reboots his audials for good measure.   
  
“Come again?”   
  
“Oh, I intend to.” Ratchet chuckles, hot and rolling, and it dispels the tension, smooths it over into something promising. “If you have room for me, that is, on your little journey to find the impossible.”   
  
Deadlock leans back in his chair, hoping the smirk hides the sudden excitement bursting like little fireworks in his spark. Drift crows with delight. “What makes you think you’re invited on my defection anyway?”   
  
“Oh, you mean pushing and poking at my plans wasn’t an invitation?” Ratchet asks, orbital ridge arched, the edges of his field pushing at Deadlock now with blatant desire.   
  
Deadlock sets his empty cup down, shaking his head when their server heads their direction. He doesn’t need anymore. For whatever comes next, he wants a clear processor.   
  
“You can crash my ship anytime.” He grins, slow and careful, letting his gaze linger on Ratchet. “But don’t think it’s going to be that easy to walk away, when it comes down to it.”   
  
Ratchet snorts. “We’ll see.” He fiddles with his cup before he lifts it and drains it one go, setting it down on the table with a motion of finality. “So. Where to?”   
  
Beneath the table, Deadlock feels a foot bump against his own, a slow slide of metal on metal, the press of Ratchet’s field like a hot promise. “I have a few ideas,” he says.   
  
Deadlock tilts his head, glossa flicking over his lips. “The waystation, though, we can start there.”   
  
“Oh?” Ratchet’s foot slides up his calf and down again.   
  
“There’s a hotel with all the perks, even better than what we have here,” Deadlock says, a hot tingle of anticipation dancing down his backstrut. “Amenities like hot oil baths, room service, berths big enough for two. Perfect place to start a vacation. For two mechs like us.” He puts his hand over his badge, not to gesture to it, but to conceal it.   
  
Two mechs.   
  
Not an Autobot and a Decepticon.   
  
Just two Cybertronians.   
  
“Sounds like a decent starting place to me,” Ratchet replies, his words deceptively casual, but nothing confusing about the way his feet tangle with Deadlock’s under the table. “I’ll figure the rest myself.”   
  
Deadlock pushes to his feet, braces his hands over the table, close enough to scent the engex on Ratchet’s vents. “We can get started now, if you want,” he murmurs. “We have quarters on the ship after all.”   
  
Ratchet tips his head up, leans forward, their lips in aching proximity. “Lead the way.”  
  
Deadlock grins, and he can feel Drift shining through it, and for once, he doesn’t slap the hopeful leaker down. For once, he lets Drift soak in the sensation of a battle well fought, and a victory won.   
  
Somehow, Deadlock doesn’t think Ratchet’s just talking about this very moment, and the berth waiting for them.   
  
It sounds like something a lot bigger. It sounds a bit like hope, as they leave the table, their empty cups, and a small ticket chip behind.   
  


***

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback, as always, is welcome, appreciated, and encouraged.


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